ENTER, STAGE RIGHT

Forty years ago today, I landed in Australia: a tiny, pale, extremely English boy of only-just 5.

I've never been back. Never been able to afford to. I've spent 89% of my life in one corner of South Western Australia-- 2 years in Kambalda, 2 years in Narrogin, the rest in a conurbation roughly 160 kilometres long with Mandurah in the South and Clarkson in the North. I currently live 12 kilometres from the house we lived in from the time we moved to Rockingham until my parents divorced.

To paraphrase an old comedian pal of mine, Vic Demised: I set out to explore the world, and got as far as Baldivis.

So, despite what Luscious says when she wants to wind me up after I've called them 'sweeties' once too often, or pronounced it DARby instead of DUHby, I'm not only not English (I was naturalised on my 11th birthday, so neither philosophically nor legally), I'm not even a decently cosmopolitan Australian. I'm just a Rockingham boy with tickets on himself.

Fuck.