I’m taking a break from the editing of my upcoming debut novel; 'The Travellers' to focus the next couple of days to the next part of the RAF application process, filling out a 'residency waiver', because I’ve spent more than thirty days out of the uk in the past five years I have to provide an itinerary of what I was doing for that time. I think it’s to show I’m not a travelling serial killer, I mean, they can’t just say "Chris, are you a travelling serial killer?" can they, it’d just be inappropriate.
But it got me thinking about the stuff I can’t put down. Like, it’s quite alright to say I spent three months in Melbourne, but unacceptable to begin talking about how I started dating Emma. It has got me thinking about those few months though, the series of unlikely events that caused me to travel the year with who was essentially a complete stranger and way back to that first date. We were staying I the same sight person unisex dorm
It started off as just an afternoon out to one of Melbourne’s outer suburbs, I forget the name but that’s unimportant, we walked around, up and down this street looking in various shops and bars until we walked up a thirst. We grabbed a beverage, a couple of 'pure blondes' and after I made the same inappropriate joke about Emma being blonde but not so pure I made every time I enjoyed one (a joke which she laughed at, but in hindsight it was probably out of politeness. I’m such a lucky fellow), we set off again, looking through more shop windows, and looking at more restaurant menus. Obviously, reading about food makes us hungry, so we decide to go for a quick bite, heading into the next place that took our fancy. A small Italian place (I’m not too into Italian food, but I was hungry and she’s really pretty, so what the hell right?) Still, this was only two people who were wandering around and got hungry, not much of a date, not until the end of the meal when the bill came and I offered to pay. She jokingly replied to this offer with "if you’re paying does this make it a date?" I didn’t really know what to say, I thought I was just being polite, but I can’t stress just how pretty this girl was, and after a bit of blustering I managed to say "if you like"
I still look back on that and cringe, wondering what was going through her head, it must have been something along the lines of 'If I like? of course I like, you Mr Maloney are gorgeous'... yep, that was definitely it, definitely not regretting her decision to come out alone with me, far from any quick escape route. So I shelled out the forty bucks (which to a traveller is a small fortune) and from that point in the evening I don’t remember much, a little too much adult juice was consumed I think, but that was the start. One date led to two, led to three (which led to quite a painful day in hospital, but that’s not a story I feel like I’m going to share any time soon), led to us leaving the friends we'd made in Melbourne and spending six weeks freezing half to death in an engineless campervan in Tasmania. It’s been pretty good since. The worst part about it all is, when people ask how we met it sounds like complete bullocks! Sounds like I’ve made up a girlfriend and a very intricate back story that would never happen in anything other than some shite rom-com with a B list cast.
But I’ve just rambled for the past half hour pretty pointlessly, and I really should be writing my residency waiver up.
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