I'm currently sitting in seat 14A of Singapore Airlines flight SQ278 from Adelaide to Singapore. I'm in a business class seat. Sitting in business class, I'm reminded of how my mother told me I am a champagne socialist. But the truth is, I don't think I am.
First of all, I never claimed to be a socialist. Second, yes, I believe in social justice and am passionate about the inequalities of the world, but I am not a rich person making those observations. It is very much the opposite. I was incredibly lucky to have been given some money which I was able to use for this business class ticket.
Business class makes me feel safe. Anything could go wrong in the country you're going to, but as long as you can get to the airport and into that business class seat, you're safe. The way they look after you and your luggage is something I am willing to spend money on, even when I don't have it.
As a woman travelling alone, I get worried something will happen, and this trip I have the added luxury of feeling just that extra bit safe. Don't get me wrong—I always fly economy and I think I'm lucky just to be in one of those seats. For me this is a luxury I can't usually afford.
Below, you can see a couple of photos of my seat and cubicle. I also took a photo of the wreath in between the windows. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas on this Singapore Airlines flight.
When she was walking back to the table, Rebecca went up to Mum and said, "What do you reckon?" Mum thought she was asking if she could get her a coffee or something to drink, so she told her she would have a flat white. Then Rebecca said to her, "No, I am going to get myself a Boost Juice. Does anyone want a Boost Juice?"
I thought this was so rude. She should have gotten the coffee for Mum. I think there are some things you can’t teach in life, and I don’t know the exact word for it—all I know is, she doesn’t have it. I told Mum I would go and get her a coffee, but she said she would get it herself.
When I get back from Cambodia, I am staying with Rebecca because Mum will still be in London for a month, and I don't like staying at the house alone. But I don't want to stay with her. I think I will just stay at the house. I've got two cats to protect me. I was going to go and feed them every day but I think I might use their welfare as an excuse not to stay with Rebecca.
It's funny—sometimes you can be so close to something or someone, and you just don't realise the reality of what it is or who they are. Rebecca is a dreadful person, and whilst I know I am deeply flawed, I like to think I can do better than Rebecca as a friend. I want to be around uplifting, empowering people, not a negative, whiney, self-absorbed woman like her. She is Nanny's granddaughter, which is why I think I've put up with her for so long, but now that Nanny is gone, I think it's time to cut her loose.
The airport wasn't all bad, though. My main check-in case was quite big and very heavy. Mum, Rebecca, and Maureen all thought it would weigh about 40 kilograms. I think with business, they said you can take two 32-kilogram bags. When I got up to the bag drop-off, I said to the man that I thought it was over. He said that if it was, I'd have to take things out of the case because they can't do heavy bags in business; it would be too heavy for the baggage handlers.
This guy was a very attractive man. I am not sure what nationality he was—he could have been Indian or a Singapore national. I put the bag up on the conveyor belt where they weigh it, and he told me it only weighed 24 kilograms. Mum, Rebecca, and Maureen couldn't believe it, but he insisted it was correct. Then, he put a heavy label on it. They all thought he was being nice to me by doing that, but I highly doubt someone would break the rules to get a piece of heavy luggage through that's going to annoy the baggage handlers or anyone who touches it.
Regardless, I was very grateful because I wanted everything in my bag and I didn't want to leave anything behind. As I was boarding this flight, I saw that man hanging around the entrance to the aircraft, and then he walked through business class a couple of times. We gave each other a little smile, and I couldn't help but think how happy I am that I actually found a man attractive again—even though this guy would have been ten years younger than me.
This isn't a long flight, just over six hours. There's a man snoring next to me. He's got his flatbed down. I thought about doing the same, but then I decided I would stay up all day today and try to get a good night's sleep tonight.
Seeing as I've got a bit of time, I'd like to tell you about a period in my life I am deeply ashamed of.
Between the ages of 16 and 17 years old I had a shameful period of my life. I had just left Loreto and moved to a school called Eyensbury College. Eyensbury was a private school, but they set it up to be much like a university with things like no uniforms and a relaxed kind of atmosphere. They tried to get students to take more responsibility for their studies and their actions. It was also in the heart of town on Franklin Street. I heard that it's recently shut down.
I think it was here that I started to get in with the wrong crowd. I remember there was this one guy, Zac, who I became fast friends with, but he was the kind of guy who took drugs and would either beat people up himself or have people beaten up by his vast network of thug-like friends.
I smoked back then. I know I was young, but I can 100% say I did it to be cool. I wanted so desperately to be considered cool, so smoking was a way to make me feel like I was. I would sometimes smoke marijuana, but not very much. I never did any other drugs, though, and I never will. I haven't and won't have smoked or smoke marijuana again.
I ended up dropping out of school for a little while, and I worked full-time at McDonald’s in Rundle Mall. During this period, I accumulated a group of friends, many of whom were very bad people. There was Zac, and then I remember there were some girls from Marryatville High School and lots of guys, some of whom I'm sure participated in criminality.
But I made friends with this guy, Matt. He was around one year younger than me, and he was a twin. He was the most beautiful-looking man I had ever seen. His brother, Tom, and he were identical twins, but they still looked a little different. Matt looked like he could be a model who just stepped out of the pages of a magazine.
Matt and Tom couldn’t have been any more different. Matt was just coming out as a young gay man, and Tom was an incredibly naughty, thug-like young man.
Because I had such low self-esteem due to my looks, it made me feel good about myself that Matt and Tom wanted to be friends with me. They were cool, they were very good-looking and popular and they seemed to really like me. Matt and I became inseparable. We did everything together. He lived in Highbury with his brother Tom and their dad, and I would often go to their house, and he would come to mine.
My dad disliked them both so much that when they came over, he would go up and stay at the farm, which we still owned back then. I had a tense relationship with Mum and Dad, and I even moved out to Nanny's for a while. To try and make amends, they would also include Matt in anything they asked me to do because they knew that was the only way I would go.
Matt and I were obsessed with each other—that’s the only way to say it. He was just starting to come out as gay, and he talked to me a lot about it. He eventually met another gay guy, Daniel, who was a little bit older than him, and Daniel was Matt's introduction into homosexuality.
I remember one night we hired a room at what was then the Hyatt. We had a party in the room, and security came a few times. Daniel's ex-boyfriend, James, was there, and at one point we couldn't find Matt and Daniel. So James and I went looking for them. We went up to the pool, and once we were outside, we realised we had locked ourselves out because we didn't bring the key card. Even worse than this was that we could hear Matt losing his gay virginity to Daniel in the showers, and James was very upset about that. We also couldn't leave so we had to listen to it. We eventually got let back in as someone else was coming out.
Matt, Tom, myself, and a big group of absolute fuckwits used to meet at Café Buongiorno on Rundle Street. We would smoke, and some of the guys—very unsettling types of people—would intimidate others. I am surprised that the management of Café Buongiorno never told us to leave or got the police involved.
To give you an idea of the type of people who would congregate there, some were homeless men who would go to Veale Gardens and participate in prostitution. They were into drugs, and thinking back now I bet they committed all sorts of crimes. I remember my parents went away one weekend, and I invited all of these people up to their beautiful house. They stole money, drank their alcohol, took their car for a drive, and smashed beer bottles at the bottom of the pool. It was an absolute disaster.
I think we were townies.
Two things I did during that time are things I feel so ashamed about today that I feel like whenever I meet someone, I need to tell them I did these things and then give them the opportunity to walk away from me if they too see the devil in me.
The first thing was, one evening, I had to go to my second job at the Entertainment Centre. I needed some black socks for work, so I went to Big W with Matt. I found the socks, but there was a huge line-up, and I was in a massive hurry. Matt convinced me to steal the socks. I slipped them into my bag, and then Matt slipped a large packet of M&M's in there too.
We walked out casually, and as we were walking away, an undercover security guard came up behind us and stopped us. He asked us to open my bag, and there were the socks and the M&M's. He led us upstairs in Big W and I just burst into tears and begged him not to charge me or do anything because my mother was a public figure, and it would be very embarrassing to her.
He didn't call the police but I can't really remember what happened, but I know I wasn't charged. I paid for the goods, and then they took a photo of Matt and me and put it up somewhere in Big W so we were known as shoplifters. I also didn't go to my shift at the Entertainment Centre. When they called me and asked why I didn't show up, I got into a bit of a heated conversation with them about it, and I ended up quitting.
The second thing I did with Matt was literally the worst thing I have ever done. We were in town, and we didn’t really have any money, so Matt suggested we go to Billy Baxter’s and then do a runner. I cannot believe it now, but I agreed. It was the Billy Baxter’s in either Regent or Adelaide Arcade which is no longer there.
We ordered our meals, ate them, and then we both sort of nodded at each other, got up, and ran as fast as we could toward the arcades exit on Grenfell Street. Matt was running faster than me, and as we reached the street, I felt a hand pull me from behind. I had been caught, and Matt kept running.
I remember the man who caught me—I think he was the owner. He was tall, had grey hair, and a moustache. He took me back to the café, and I think there were mobile phones back then because I called a friend and asked her to go and pick up some money from my mother, who was at the hairdresser which was in the City Cross Arcade. First of all, my mother was not happy I sent someone to get money from her. But second of all, this was the worst moment of my life, and even up until now, it’s got to be up there.
The owner kept saying to me, “Why did you do that?” and “What were you thinking?”—sort of suggesting that Matt was a bad influence on me. He didn’t call the police, simply because I think he felt sorry for me. My friend came with the money from my mother, and we sorted it out.
The security guard at the arcade remembered me, though, because every time I walked past the entrance to the arcade, he smirked.
So I did these horrible things. I am not saying that I was 17 years old and so heavily influenced by Matt to do these terrible things that I have no responsibility at all for my actions. To the contrary, I take full responsibility for what I did, I own it and I am so sorry and embarrassed about my behaviour. I also want to make it clear that I was 100% aware of what I was doing. But it is interesting how far someone with very low self-esteem will go to be accepted and feel good about themselves—even if feeling good means they are seriously doing the wrong thing.
I don’t know if someone’s keeping record of all the bad things we’ve done in this life. I hate to think what black marks I have against my name. But I got better as I got older—better in terms of having respect for other people and myself.
We all used to go to Café Buongiorno, and it really was such a toxic and probably illegal environment. I never quite fit in with anyone I went to school with, but I somehow fit in with this crowd for a moment in time. It’s hard to believe, but that was 26 years ago now.
I talked about homeless people being a part of that group, and whilst I have compassion for them, these people were particularly bad. Matt and Tom are both dead now. Matt died of pancreatic cancer, and Tom hanged himself in response to his bipolar disorder.
I can’t marry up that young woman who would do anything to be cool with who I am today. Whilst I’m still sorting things out in so many ways, I have high standards in terms of my own behaviour, and as I have mentioned previously in this post, I intend to raise my standards as to who I spend time with too.
Anyway, I’m going to stop writing now, and I might come back to this a little later on today when I’m in Singapore.
So, I’m writing to you now from the Crowne Plaza at Changi Airport in Singapore. This Crowne Plaza hotel is so much nicer than the one I stayed in on the Gold Coast a couple of years ago. That one was really run down, but this one is beautiful.
Below, you can see the enormous Christmas tree they have set up in the lobby.
The room is spacious and has a great view of the runway. I watched a few planes take off, but then I closed the curtains so I could start thinking about sleep.
Below, you can see some photos I took of the room. There is a feature wall with photographs of lilies superimposed on it, and the lilies cover a bit of the bathroom window. However, there are no curtains or anything to separate someone using the bathroom from another guest. Is it this type of thing that kills marriages—when you see too much?
But just for me, it is beautiful. I love it.
Tomorrow, I travel to my final destination—Siem Reap, Cambodia. I can’t wait to get there and settle into the hotel and the surroundings. I also can’t wait to get to the temples. I’ve got to be up at 5:00am tomorrow morning, so I’m hoping I get a bit of sleep. Goodnight from Singapore!
