I love Christmas....it's such an incredibly curious time. I love the traditions associated with it, for example my girlfriend, Die Fraulein, makes beautiful cakes and she has shown me pictures of whole houses of gingerbread all made for the yuletide season. In her lovely German village it'll snow, there'll be spiced wine, lovely cakes, loads of food and all their presents opened and shared on Christmas Eve. For me that's a phenomenally unusual thing to do, for me it's up early on Christmas Day, tear through the pressies, sometimes you're already sweating from the heat, head to the rellies, say g'day, hand over pressies, get more back and then hit the beers, scoff the food and have a merry old time on the back verandah with the sun in the sky! Sometimes there's a swim in the pool but not this year......and as I've been typing this Die Fraulein has sent me a stunning picture of the snow on her lunch break! Oh the beauty of it, the silent majesty of winter's morn! These are the traditions that we're brought up with in Australia but as I've said, our weather is far from soft snow and still mists. So we make our own traditions, for example myself and my mates, THE BEER SOCK CHALLENGE. We place a stubby holder on a fence and then kick a football at it until we knock it off....simple but fun! THE BROOMSTICK CHALLENGE, a contender takes broom, holds it vertically above them and spins around 30 times while staring at the end and then tries to jump over it.
These are silly, and sometimes stupid fun, but for myself and my brother it's playing Resident Evil! That's right, slaying zombies is the order of the day during the yuletide season! It started about 6 years ago when we first scored out Game Cube, we hired Resident Evil and through a glitch ended up hiring it for about 12 days for the price of 4! It was over the Christmas break so there was plenty of time to bring down Umbrella Corp. Ever since then, in the days between my birthday and Chrissy the zombie hunt has been on!
Now the big segue into the next instalment of my blog about Foreign Exchange, my spiel about Christmas is actually rather appropriate because it was the day before Christmas Eve when my agent Sue rang me up and said I have bagged my Christmas present, the role of Brett Miller in Foreign Exchange.
But, before that magic moment there were 2 weeks of stress as the producers in Ireland and Germany ummmed and ahhhed about me. Sue was always straight forward, "you're 90% there, but they could still say no". It's not what I wanted to hear, I was so close how could they say no now? So I played stupid games with myself like I do when I go for auditions. I used to play golf, well if you could call it that, on Saturday's when I was 16 and one day I had a tough putt and I said to myself "Self, if you bag this you've got the gig in Foreign Exchange", so I did and I did!!!
Now it was a rather hectic Christmas that Christmas in 2004 because we had to organise school work and a life that was about to completely change! I knew that I wasn't going back to school in February and that added to the partying lifestyle over those days and given I only had 25 days before I would be gone for 6 months things weren't dull. I wrestled with my feelings around my high school girlfriend, I wanted to be with her but she wasn't sure because I would be gone for so long.....ahhhh teenagers.....but the contact with my teachers was most interesting.
My school principal, Brother Hubert, was incredibly supportive. It was rather striking given he's a brother for fucks sakes but he was far more supportive than the bloody drama department. I loved doing drama at high school but this was bullshit, the single department I could not wait to tell and there was some interest but more interest in telling me to divert my studies for a year. Bollocks to that! I wanted to finish school with my mates, not prolong it! That was a small mishap in an otherwise amazing build up to my departure on January 16th.
Dad told me there's nothing sadder or lonelier than an empty schoolyard and the day I went to get my books out of my locker I realised how true this was. I went to a school with 500 kids in my year, walking across the playground I could hear all those voices in this void of tarmac and bricks. For a moment I didn't want to leave, miss out on all these parties and final year celebrations, birthdays, a footy season and the shared stress of exams.....there may have been some tears as I walked out of the gates for the final time for 6 months!
January 16th came around quick, I was up early to fly out of Sydney at 1pm. My Aunty Julie would accompany me the way over and for a few weeks there but that didn't diminish the sadness of leaving Newcastle. Saying goodbye to all my mates, especially my close ones like Dan and Tomski, was arduous but they gave me a "Go and get stuck in" kick up the arse.
Suddenly i was hugging my Mum, Dad and brother goodbye and I was on the plane to Perth.....the home of Brett Miller and then there was no chance to look back........
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