Sven's life in Oz

Australia is an arid, parched land most of the year. Not that we city-dwellers would know it: I turn on the tap and water comes out, so I don’t ask any questions. I seldom think that only a few hours drive away there’s a giant desert the size of Europe where every drop of water is trapped and reused three times before it eventually evaporates away. But the idea that we live in a paradise of perpetual summer is not entirely accurate. It may not ever freeze in the Red Centre, but Sydney gets cold in a hurry when winter arrives and I am never prepared for it.

Before I continue I should  define the term ‘cold’. I am not talking northern hemisphere cold. If it ever snows in Sydney I’ll eat my bobble hat. I don’t think I’ve even seen a frost in the city, although last year the temperature did drop to -1C overnight. The days usually peak at around 12/13C in the coldest period, which may not seem all that frigid to you, but when it’s 30C on an average day a 20-degree drop feels pretty baltic to me.

As usual I caught the first cold of the season, spread it around the office and got it back again with interest. I was feeling smug to have shifted it in two days, little suspecting my colleagues were just looking after it for me. I’m beginning to think I’m some kind of influenza incubator; a common-cold Typhoid Mary just waiting for the next wintry snap to spread my infection like a seasonal plague.

Last week I packed up the fans and rolled out the heaters as my aluminium-framed windows aren’t exactly built for the colder seasons and, this being Sydney, central heating is unheard of. I admitted defeat and accepted the summer was over when I dragged my duvet out of the cupboard and installed it on the bed. I dug my slippers out from the back of the drawer and wrapped myself in a blanket while I watched tv. I am a beaten man.

Winter in Sydney is horrible for two reasons. Firstly, it’s not Christmas. In the UK winter means the end of the year, a winding down from the summer and a ramping up of the party season as we race towards December. Here there’s nothing to look forward to but the return of summer. There’s no Christmas, no New Year and no party season. It’s just an inconvenient three-month interregnum between barbecues and pool parties. And secondly, nothing happens. Everyone rugs up, stays in and waits for the sun to come back. When you live in an outdoors-y nation like this one, you forget how to entertain yourself at home. By September everyone has gone stir-crazy and deathly pale.

At least this year I have three things to look forward to: my holiday in NYC, my birthday and my sister’s wedding. I’m sure that will keep the blues at bay. Now, where did I put that Scrabble?

I love baking. It’s a bit ironic since I’m actually not much a pudding fan – I would always pick a starter if I had to choose, and a cheese plate over an ice cream if I were really pushed. I think it might be the objectivity with baking that means I can admire my success without wanting to make it totally perfect. I always feel like I can make savoury stuff more appealing; with puddings I don’t feel the same pressure. Odd, isn’t it?

This weekend I had two great excuses to get some serious baking done: it was James’s birthday, but I also had a pile of goodies in my kitchen for various reasons and next week I’m starting my healthy living regime. I’m going to New York in June (more on that to follow) and I have to look amazing. I need to use all that sugary, fatty shit up, and a party means I won’t be eating it all myself. Everybody wins! Having seen this fabulous idea on Bakerella, I thought I would give it a go. The plan was to bake chocolate brownies, and serve them with ice cream in individual chocolate bowls. The brownies turned out wonderfully; I remembered I have a fan-assisted oven just before they all burned to a crisp. Dark chocolate brownies with white chocolate chips and mixed nuts and raisins: even I couldn’t get enough of them. They’re like confectionery heroin. I defy you to stop at just one.

The chocolate bowls were a little less successful. The first batch, in fact, were a complete disaster. The instructions say the chocolate doesn’t need to be ’superhot’; I would say that any heat at all is a bad idea. You need to get the chocolate just before it starts to solidify for the best results. Don’t do what I did, and dip your water balloons into the chocolate while it is still warm. Nothing makes a bloody mess quite like 12 chocolate-covered water balloons exploding in your kitchen. The place was completely covered. There was a man-shaped clean patch on the wall behind me – I was plastered in the stuff from head to toe. Everything else was dripping in molten cocoa products, and it took me half an hour to clean the place up. The second batch survived the chocolate immersion and, a few hours later when the I popped the balloons, I had twelve shell-like chocolate bowls to serve at dinner.

They were a hit for the novelty, but the brownies were the overall winner. Make some for yourself and enjoy!

Ingredients

• 100g chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
• 110g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 225g granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• white chocolate chips/nuts/marshmallows (I used 200g mixed nuts and raisins, and 200g white chocolate chips, but you can throw in whatever you like. If it starts to get too stiff, throw in some more chocolate).

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180?C. (If your oven is fan-assisted, you’ll probably want to set it a bit lower.) Grease a baking tray or oven-proof dish.
2. Melt the butter and the chocolate slowly together.
3. Mix the other ingredients, except the nuts/chocolate chips/whatever, together in a large bowl.
4. Add in the molten butter and chocolate to the mixture.
5. Mix in the nuts etc, then pour the whole lot into the tray/dish.
6. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

In all the excitement I forgot to report on the birthday shenanigans.  You don’t want to hear about the ins and outs of the night (it’s always dull to listen to other people’s party stories), but a few of the highlights:

• I lost our team two tickets to Melbourne each, by choosing Dubai instead of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a country.
• Our team was going great guns but eventually we came 5th (?) out of 26 or so, which isn’t so bad (sorry about the woolly facts – I was quite merry by prize time)
• Drinks taste better when someone else is buying them for you and, mysteriously, they don’t give you a hangover either. Amazing stuff.

You can check out all the photos in the usual place, if you are so inclined.  Otherwise, take it from me: 30 doesn’t feel any different from 29, which didn’t feel any different from 28, which didn’t feel any different from 27…

So this is it: the last day of my twenties. Over the past couple of days I have endured endless jibes about how it’s all downhill from here, how I’m going to stack on the weight and sprout hair in hideous places, and how I might as well kiss my sex life goodbye as I turn 75 in gay years. I know lots of people who dreaded turning thirty and preferred to drown their sorrows rather than drink to the occasion. I’m not having a bar of it: I have never felt more alive.

First, I would like to thank all the charming people who have looked shocked, protested and informed me that I look much younger than my years. (One colleague was horrified when she discovered I wasn’t 25; she made my day.) It’s always flattering to hear that you look good and however much my age doesn’t bother me, the lower the number the better when it comes to looks. James will spit to hear it, but if you want to leave similar comments at the bottom of this post, I shan’t protest.

The main problem with turning 30, or, I assume 40, 50 or any round number, is that you judge yourself against the last comparable milestone. It would be easy for me to look back to my 21st birthday and wonder where all my vim and vigour went. It’s not a flattering comparison: when I was 21 I could eat a car and drink the sump oil and not gain a pound. I could down my body weight in alcohol and still get up for a 9am lecture and a full day of work before doing it all again the next night. I may even have been more energetic in bed, but you’ll have to ask the people who were there because I’ll never admit to that one.

On the face of it, I’ve lost quite a lot over the intervening years and these are things I would prefer to have kept. But I was also an insecure, closeted borderline-anorexic with no idea what I wanted in life and no real ambition to find out. If you had told me 10 years ago that I when I turned 30 I would be signing the lease on my first flat on my own in Sydney; that I would know what I wanted to do with my life and already be on the road to doing it; that I would be celebrating my birthday with my rugby team at a quiz night, and that I would be seeing two men at the same time, I would have thought you were on smack.

Life is amazing. There isn’t a day when I don’t think how lucky I am that 14 billion years of universal history went by and, despite the fantastic improbability of it all, life exists and I had the good fortune to be born at all. How unlikely is your own life? The chances are so infinitesimally small that any day you don’t think “I am a lucky bastard” is a day wasted. Having great people around you only sweetens the deal. Turning 30 is a gift, considering the alternative, and it would be a crime to lament it.

So finish early today, have a drink with friends and celebrate with me. Life is far too short, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.

The times, they are a-changing.  With twelve days left of my twenties I should be thinking about how it feels to be starting a new era, all the profound lessons I have learned over the past three decades and what I think the next ten years have in store.  All that’s far too serious though, so let’s have a party retrospective instead, shall we?  Grab a margarita and enjoy the highlight of everyone’s social calendar for the past ten years by proxy, as I run through a brief history of the birthday parties of my twenties.

My birthday party, for better or worse, has been an institution.  Back at the turn of the century I hadn’t quite worked out the format that would make it an annual extravaganza, but I did have the essential ingredients: a boat load of good friends who love to drink.  I spent my 21st in excellent company in some of the more questionable bars in Bath before heading to the worst club the city has to offer.  You know you’ve got good friends with you when they don’t object to a venue where your feet stick to the carpet and the DJ credits every tune he plays.  Oh, those were good times, but it wasn’t until 2002 that the now infamous fancy dress was introduced, and since then I have never looked back.

The format is simple: everyone gets dressed up according to my whimsical notion of a theme and comes over to my home for drinks and mutual costume appreciation.  After several drinks there is usually some dancing in the lounge room.  A critical point is reached when I announce “Let’s make cocktails!”, where ‘cocktails’ is an optimistic euphemism for whatever comes to hand being thrown into a jug and forced onto the guests; or, as Simon calls it, “slop”.  At this point, it’s time to go out.  Usually this means 25 well-oiled people in outrageous costumes hitting the gayest disco in town like rabid loons.  Obviously we take over the dance floor and after 15 glasses of miscellaneous booze, wild horses couldn’t keep me off the stripper pole.   This continues until the wee hours when we head home, I fall asleep and, in recent years, James entertains the hardened drinkers with sing-along Barbra Streisand classics and whatever is left of the liquor.

Sadly all good things must come to an end, and let’s be honest, you probably all deserve a break.  How much more can I ask of you when year on year you continue to amaze me, no matter what the theme.  Movie Killers (highlights were Poison Ivy, Bonnie & Clyde and Elle Driver), Mexicans (the planned bbq was rained off and we spent all day indoors bumping into one another’s sombreros) and Camptastic wonders (the boys all sucked it up and minced it out just for me), every year has been a delight and I have loved every minute.  That said, one night stands out above all the others.  One night where the costumes were mindblowing, where every guest was beside themselves with anticipation for the next arrival.  I speak, of course, of the fantastic ‘Create Your Own Superhero‘ night.  Not only did every single guest amaze with their costume, backstory, powers and nemesis (The Purple Pimp! The Gang Bang Squad! Party Man, Grammar Girl and The Amazingly Evil Dr Hypno!) but the ensuing party, drinking, dance floor takeover and disco throwdown made the whole night the best I have ever held.

This year I have a smaller circle of friends with whom to celebrate and though I’m sure I could rustle up a theme and an outfit, it wouldn’t be the same.  Hold your tears though, friends.  If there’s anything I love as much as a fancy dress party it’s a good pub quiz; this year I will be joining old friends and new at the Sydney Convicts Annual Quiz Night fundraiser.  Expect me to be smashed by Round 3, when I shall reach the peak of my persuasive powers about knowing the answer, though my capacity for rational thought will hardly be equal to the task.  I’m sure it will be an amazing night, and if the parties in my thirties are even half as good as the parties in my twenties were, I’m in for a good decade.  I hope you can all make it with me.

PS: I’m back in Britain at the end of August for three weeks till the middle of September.  You know there will be some belated brithday action going down.  You only turn 30 once, after all.