Monday 8th June to Friday 19th june

Monday 8th June

It was her Majesty the Queen's birthday today and much celebrating was done... as tall one was on $50 an hour for working on a public holiday. Strangely New Zealand celebrated her birthday a week ago whilst England don't even have a public holiday for her. Small one also found out that Tall one's father drives a tractor while listening to Einem. Tuesday 9th June

Tall one's fourth day working at his new job in Darling harbour. Today he broke a dinner plate and tea cup set, whilst on his third day he broke a salt shaker, on his second day a side plate and on his first day he broke just a water glass.... why did they hire the poor fool? Wednesday 10th June

Today Small one had managed to book himself into six different job interviews without them clashing. Four today, each an hour and a half apart and two tomorrow. The first was with an enthusiastic door to door salesman who promised small one big sales from duping people to Save the Children. The second was a sports promoter that wanted Small one back tomorrow for a trial day whilst the third was an un-enthusiastic door to door salesman. The fourth interview was for a call centre on the floor directly below where Aussie Farmers was located (where Tall one and Small one had a few weeks prior suffered four days of door to door milkman sales). The interviewer spent all his time talking to the person sat next to Small one, making jokes about paedophilia to the uncomfortable Christian, using Small one's application form to scrawl interview notes for the second man on. Small one thought the interview went badly and perhaps the Aussie Farmers manager with the tree trunk neck had put in a bad word, however the interviewer text him later to start on Friday. Meanwhile, Tall one had not been fired for breaking so much crockery, but due to the now very cold and very wet weather in Sydney the harbour side café was empty. Tall one spent his 5 hours polishing and re-polishing the bar and serving coffee to the five cheap customers. One customer was so cheap he only ordered food for his two children and then shared theirs. . Thursday 11th June

Tall one and Small one sat and had breakfast downstairs. Unfortunately for them the dinning hall was empty except for a Dutch boy who sat down next to them. The Dutch boy then preceded to interrogate them blandly about their jobs; how they got jobs, where they were working, what experience they had.... it was almost like sitting through a job interview with no job on offer whilst trying to eat Cornflakes. A speedy exit was made, Tall one headed for Central Station on leaflet duty whilst Small one headed for his last two interviews. In the first he found himself sat amongst 20 other applicants in a waiting room. A chirpy man came in and said for the next three hours or so they would be having a group interview and be going around the room in a circle explaining about their own history and qualities, then later on he would announce who was successful and who wasn't. Small walked out. After an un-interesting second interview Small one decided the lesser of the six evils would be to go with the first interview, the enthusiastic Save the Children door to door salesman, and was due to start on Friday. Meanwhile, Tall one managed to catch a Greyhound Bus arriving at central station at 9.15am, and so handed out a lot of hostel leaflets. Working for a few hours midday doing a function in a big lawyers building in the city centre, where they even provided free beer in their staff room kitchen. The view from the kitchen was amazing.

Meeting Small One after work they were both now very cold and decided to go jacket shopping. Whilst looking around one such jacket shop a man who was trying on one of the store jackets on display turned to them and asked if they wanted any help? If he was working there why was he trying on one of the jackets? Tall one eventually found a jacket which resembled one of a Sea Captain. Small one was not to find a jacket until the next day. Friday 12th June

Small one started at his new job. On site sometime after lunch he managed to make three sales on his first day (getting $50 per sign up) whilst his 'team leader' only made one. Knocking on doors again Small one found himself in largely Asian communities. People answering the doors were asking to phone friends in order to translate what he was saying on the door. At one such door an Asian man answered and immediately said 'Come in, come in, follow me....'. Leading Small one upstairs, through kitchen, then through the sitting room.... Small one wondered where he was being taken. Then the Asian man stopped in the bathroom and pointed to his boiler and said 'please, fix, I waiting weeks...'. Small one was not there to fix the boiler, small one was dressed in shirt and tie not in overalls. The Asian man showed Small one out. Meanwhile, Tall one was on an evening function in the restaurant. In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the large battleship in Darling Harbour called 'The Vampire' the museum had tenuously decided to have three Vampire movie nights. What a way to celebrate a famous warship by projecting Keither Sutherland in 'The Lost Boys' onto a big floating screen. The effect was actually quite good, random as the whole thing was screening three horror movies 5 months before Halloween. They had even hired some old man in a terrible white curly wig and cape to do some camp introduction to the small crowd about Vampires....

Saturday 13th June

Small one now weighs only 9 stone. Small one left to do more door to door sales whilst Tall one went to serve food at another Vampire movie night, this time they were showing 'Twilght'.

Small one made no sales or money today, but did have some Asian woman tell him that her own child needed saving, and took him inside to show him her little kid in bed on life support. This blog is always about the fun we have, we are lucky to have fun. Seeing that poor kid dying was not nice. I pray that God looks after her and her family. Sunday 14th June

Tall one and Small one had their first lie in for a very long time as they were both off work. They then went out at 1pm for a roast at PJ O'Briens recommended by Eddie and Elana. It was a very nice roast, although Tall one would have preferred roast potatoes to mash and croquettes.

A Cadbury crème Brulee and Ice Cream dessert was also had, and was also very good. This was the only meal they ate all day. Walking home they past the familiar face of the tramp who sits cross legged on the pavement, on the corner of George and Market street. His little sign in his lap reads, 'Having trouble finding work need some help to stay off streets'. No kidding he's having trouble getting work, he spends all bloody day sat cross legged on that same corner. He must be good at Sudoku by now though.

Monday 15th June

Back to work for both Tall one and Small one. Walking back from work in the evening a new tramp approached Tall one and asked for some money. Tall one interrupted him and said “sorry mate I don't have any change”. The tramp retorted, very pissed off “no...well actually if you'd listened I was going to say if you could spare more than just a bit of change....”. Tall one kept walking. Tuesday 16th June

Small one left to do the central station leaflet work alone while Tall one wanted to rest longer due to on going wisdom teeth and coughing fit problems. Tall one's rest was interrupted by a very annoying hostel Fire alarm. After trying to ignore it for five minutes tall one finally dragged himself down all three flights of stairs where half of the residents were stood outside and the other half sat in kitchen. Two fire engines turned up and it took them 2 minutes to discover there was no fire and just steam from the girls toilet. Eventually tall one went to work where there was a tropical rain storm most of the day. As half of the cafe seating is in open air and the other half under the leaky, flooded canopy roof, there was again no customers. Why did this company employ three new members of staff? Meanwhile Small one was being stalked by a mysterious man in a car whilst knocking doors in the dark. The car was slowly following and stopping as Small one went in and out of houses. Eventually Small one called his manager who picked him up and took him to another street. He told him this new street had already been done by them, but he may as well do it again and re-knock on everybody's doors. Why not piss these people off twice... that's probably why one of them was following in that car? Wednesday 17th June

Rained again... but a job offer was phoned through to Tall one and Small one up in the middle of the Blue Mountains region. A big scary, hotel is looking for hospitality staff to live and work in the hotel for good pay, private bedroom and meals provided. Although it is in the middle of nowhere at Jenolan Caves and even the Lonely Planet book compared the place to the Hotel in The Shining. Interview on Friday anyway. Thursday 18th June

Tall one and Small one both had a day off, or at least Tall one did and Small one phoned in sick. Headed for station to catch the 9.15 Greyhound bus to hand out leaflets. Decided to not bother with jackets as quite humid out. Five minutes down the road it pissed down with rain and Tall one and Small one were drenched. They stopped at the YHA Cafe run by Asians, where Small one had no breakfast, but Tall one had the largest. The breakfast came with an awful lot, but turned out to just be awful. The sausages, hash browns and bacon had gone hard from sitting on a hot plate for hours, the toast was cold, the scrambled egg was disgusting, the fruit salad was old and the tea was cold. Small one managed to get $6.10 of the $8.40 refunded.

Back to Central Station which was swarming with bubbly blonde girls running up to people giggling at the same time as telling them Cancer was a good cause for charity, which it is but not in the manner that they do it. They seemed to be managed by a man who thought it was a necessity to wear sunglasses when it was pissing down with rain. While at the station time was spent hunting for the old familiar faces of tramps and lunatics still needed for the wall of fame. Many seemed to have disappeared, the bearded wind up toy and the crazy Asian woman have not been seen for over a week. However some new friendly faces were appreciated; a little Asian woman wearing a dirty blonde curly wig carrying around a filthy backpack as well as a large bearded man with about six bobble hats on his head at once. After taking more photos of the less fortunate Tall one and Small one returned home. Through Hyde Park yet another lunatic was seen, this one a businessman standing with his nose touching a big tree in the park - swinging his arms and hips from side to side.

Further up through St Mary's Cathedral they were setting up for this weekends Winter Festival, with an ice skating rink as large as a 20c coin.

Back at the hostel, Tall one took a bath. The first he had had in 13 months. It was only a 4 foot long bath, and so his legs had to be un-screwed in order for him to fit inside it, but it was still a good bath. In the evening Tall and Small had to return the DVD rentals and so ventured out once more. It was not raining and so they made the decision to just wear jackets and not bring the rather camp umbrella purchased by Tall one a week prior. Five minutes down the road it pissed down with rain and Tall one and Small one were drenched. After returning DVDs they went into Maloney's Irish bar, which was about as Irish as Queen Elizabeth. Small one asked the blonde bar maid if they had Dry Roasted Peanuts. She responded, “Peanuts?”, “Yes” said Small one, “Dry Roasted ones?”. She made a gesture along the packets of peanuts displayed along the back of the bar and said “Peanuts”. Small one said “Have you got Dry Roasted?”. With the same vacant expression the blonde girl said “Yes, peanuts” and gestured towards the selection again. Small one said, “Well can I have a packet then?”. The blonde girl took a packet off of the shelf and gave it to Small one.... they were Salted Peanuts. Small one gave it back to her and said, “No, can I have dry roasted peanuts?”. She said back through her false smile, “Dry roasted?”. “Yes” said Small one (like the one inside your head). She replied, “No, we have no dry roasted”. It was a trying time and we ended up getting a terrible pint of Guinness and some over priced wedges. Returning home Tall and Small stopped in the Winter Festival now open outside the Cathedral. Where (as advertised) Sydney Winter Festival tries to emulate European Winter Themes??? Which was basically a dozen stalls selling hot malt wine and someone had put fake snow in fake Christmas trees. Tall one tried to buy some hot apple pudding with custard but was informed by the Arab cashier that he did not accept REAL money, and that I first had to buy some 'Winter' coins from one of the other stalls. Walking back to the money stall they gave her $12 cash and she gave them $12 worth of winter tokens, then they returned back to the Arab and gave him the $12 tokens and he gave them $12 worth of apple and custard. The whole process was not justified as the apple was nice, but not that nice.

Friday 19th June

Woke up this morning and Small one decided to have another day off work, whilst Tall one is not on until the evening. Small one went outside to make a phone call and when he re-entered the bedroom Tall one pointed out that Small one had trodden in some excrement. It was then discovered it was not only all over Small one's shoes, but also the carpet and bed. It was then discovered that it was actually human excrement, as Small one remembered walking down the side of the building just as a sheepish looking tramp was emerging with a lot of bedding. Tall one and Small one have had better starts to the day. Following the human excrement incident the man from the Blue Mountains job interview turned up at 9am. Although he was wearing shorts in 5 degree weather, he seemed amicable and the job sounded well. A live in job with food and own private room in a very large hotel in the middle of the mountains, by the Jenolan Caves. Approximately 40 hours a week at a rate of $17 to $25 per hour. Tall one and Small one said they could start in a week.

Small one had decided to not bother going back to Save the Children, whilst Tall one has to go speak to his nice job at Yots Cafe in Darling Harbour (who nice as they seem have still not given Tall one his share of the tips from last week).