the future of sport found in critical danger if THIS is the head of the so-called Sporty Society…
Time of writing 22:00 25/07/2024
Time of editing 22:27 25/07/2024
And when everyone thought she wouldn’t, alas, she returned. Welcome back to Liv’s Corner, Olivia’s Cave, the cracked and crevice walls, the indefinite and indescribable cave art scribbled and thumb painted, I don’t know, I’m not an expert. To say I have not missed writing this little love letter would be a huge lie. Today, dear listeners, I am presuming the role of someone who returns from a really big trip and is going to make you sit there and listen to all of my stories with accompanying photographs until my voice is hoarse and you’re near asleep. Get it? I’m going to do exactly that, I’m not acting or doing a bit. Buckle in. 4 countries, 8 planes. She’s gone worldwide.
If you are a frequent cave dweller you will be well aware of my relationship with motion sickness. This factor, combined with the actual event of taking two long-haul planes alone for the first time in my life, was a vast and looming threat of my cool calm collectedness. I’m pleased to report getting to Perth was a largely successful run, wedged in beside a couple of middle aged men going to Bangkok to find love (in the shape of green cards) and an older Australian couple who were very much unbothered by my presence until breakfast came round and I could not be wakened from my slumber. Outside of a little turbulence, I would not experience a violent wave of sickness until the way home. Life has a funny way of reinforcing certain aspects of your personality through force. For example, people ask me why I’m so easy-going (Read: they don’t) and I will now tell them about my head in a bag, vomiting whilst the plane was stationary, every single passenger and their luggage passing me by as I struggled with…what exactly? Motionless sickness? Perhaps I have discovered a new form.
Perth was very English-weather based, like going to Brighton in March. That’s how I saw it: cloudy, cloudy, a lovely, brilliant blue sunny day, cloudy, cloudy. What was I expecting? It was winter, and I looked like a brilliant fool swanning around the city in my shorts and graphic tees, looking more tourist than I ever felt. It was an approachable city, filled with avenues and boutiques, an overwhelming amount of sex shops and souvenir traps around every corner. One thing I could never quite get over is the phrase ‘how you going’. I’ve worked customer service jobs for years now, and even I couldn’t tell if they were asking me how I was doing or if it was just a stand-in for ‘hello’. To prevent my being wrong and a possible public humiliation, I opted for the most awkward option of them all: just stand there and whisper ‘hi’ in as quiet a tone as possible. Who can blame me, I’ve come from England. I can act like an alien when I’m genuinely from the other side of the world.
Venturing outside of the city, we stayed in two delightful little towns Scarborough and Fremantle, the latter being a charming old port filled with many a market and a lovely sense of community to it. Aside from a lot of people obviously being present for the wonder of Rottnest Island, the food was brilliant, the shops also at a high calibre (I got a tarot reading so accurate I shook a little). If I had more time, I would conjure up some story about how we landed ourselves in prison but I’ll be frank, we did just want to be real tourists and stay in a real prison, Fremantle Prison Hostel ! (decommissioned in 1991, mind). And I escaped! The LivShank Redemption.
Rottnest Island was like some sort of dream state. Alarm set at 5am (due to jetlag, I arose at 3am, which was as delightful as it sounds), hurriedly putting on clothes and walking on tiptoes, roaming through a town at 6 in the morning, the sky pitch black, queuing for the ferry with the construction workers. By the time the ferry bounced along the waves, I use bounce, as I swear I felt the boat take off the water and levitate, if just for a few seconds. To see a quokka with my own eyes was some kind of privilege I don’t think I’ll ever forget. To confidently say, ahh yes, I’ve seen one of those cute little rat hybrids that are only specifically found on that island, truly a marvel to behold. I was inches close to putting one in my bag, I would have fed it scraps, toilet trained it. My regret eludes me.
We arrive at the 15th of June. We have played housemates in Scarborough cooking each other meals in our own little apartment, swam in an icy cold pool surrounded by a herd of smoking French people in a Perth hostel, and finally I have succumbed to a regular sleep cycle. The train to the airport has maintenance, a classic scenario when we are holding all of our luggage, so a 50 minute bus ride later, Perth airport awaits us. 8 hours pass, deliberately, as the cheapest flight to Bali was indeed the one that came in at 1am. Funny that. Far and away the most violent plane landing on runway sequence I’ve ever experienced, the wheels smacking the tarmac so loudly I was shocked into believing something must have blown up or fallen off. It’s 1am. The suitcases are a little slow to come out of the carousel. The tourist forms won’t load. There’s a queue to leave the airport. Around 50 men hassle us with the strength of 1000, desperate to buy their cab service all promising air conditioning in the thick fog of 100% humidity. It’s 1:30am. The driver I pre-booked isn’t responding and I have to dump the bags and pace around the airport trying to find Wi-fi, to which he sends me a nondescript picture of his location, forcing me to exhaustedly inquire to every Balinese man standing outside ‘ARE YOU MY CAB? OLIVIA ?’. It’s 1:45am. We are greeted to our hotel by the oldest, slowest receptionist and a room so stuffy I sit stripped to the bra completely dumbfounded, but grateful. We made it, we made it, soaring through my mind as we finally sweat to sleep around three.
As for the rest of my time in Bali, events seemed to happen in peaks and troughs, some days full of lazing by the pool and reading, and others, completely swept up in some delicious activity or baffled by yet another crazy person to meet. At Waterbom Bali, a brilliant day of genuinely surprising waterslides, we emerged from the ‘Boomerang’, hearts pounding, swimsuits sticking, and we’re trudging away when I realised my second toenail had entirely ripped off. Read: entire toenail. Not just the little nail bit, I mean nailbed and all. I must have done something really good the day before though, because no pain was felt, even when the medical staff made a great fuss with the antiseptic and the tweezers, even after I signed a consent form presumably so I wouldn’t sue or something. We rode the slide again three or four more times, at one soaring so high off the slide we arrived at the pool to a lifeguard’s shocked face saying ‘I’ve never seen someone go so high off of there before’. I can add freaking a lifeguard out beyond belief to a list of things I never thought I’d accomplish.
My last mention of Bali I’ll detail is the wonderful spiritual cleanse I had the privilege of attending in Ubud, north of the beaches and noise, filled with lush rice fields, yoga clothes shops and dengue fever carrying mosquitos. But Saturday morning, we rose, ate omelettes and black coffee, and soared to the Tamin Greja Waterfall, a beautiful oasis in the middle of actual nowhere. There, we donned silk robes, carried around big baskets of flower offerings and sticks of smoky incense (which relit in my hands causing a thick blaze that I unnecessarily panicked about), and lay blessings to gods I have forgotten the names of (don’t smite me down please) and drink from holy water. Stomachs steeled, we were instructed to scream into a waterfall, and we know me, I never do things by halves. I screamed, nay, shrieked, like I’ve never before, the lightness lifting my body as soon as our lungs were emptied. It is an experience it will take some effort to forget, especially drinking water from flowing streams that came from fishes and stomping feet. And getting blessed by young coconut water and soaked grains. Mama Bali blessed us, and I wished on my family’s continual health and protection, the bracelet tied on me serving a consistent reminder of the true unity with nature I felt that day.
Above: the best outfit I brought to the table by far. Matching orange eyeshadow to my Pingu NOOT shirt? Bandana and sunglasses? Beads from the market? Battered Skechers? A severe look.
Time passed. I burnt my face, my back, my legs, my feet, the tops of my shoulders at different intervals. We sought out live music like moths to a porchlight. I crusted over like a brittled beach shell, a tan so bronzed on my back I am getting it out every day just to show off to people. I got tired of wearing the same 4 outfits, and then it was time, wearing 4 layers, to catch an afternoon flight to Singapore, and with some delays, we were eventually let onto the city with more humidity than Bali, if that was actually possible. Singapore, whilst never laying in refuse or any form of rubbish (highly criminalised), was instead littered with odd little English language combinations of shops. We dined at ‘awfully chocolate’, passing ‘wicked cookies’ and ‘filthy cakes’. Apart from the rampant consumption of the city, with shopping centres practically at the end of every corner and on every street the closer to the Bay you came, it appears the concept of a sweet treat is riddled with naughtiness and remorse. What they are not sorry about, however, is the cleanliness. I have never been in a city that maintains itself so conveniently, so silently and effortlessly. Whilst scribbling in my notebook one afternoon a receipt accidentally flew out and the weight of all eyes as I scrabbled to claim it, of course, being just out of reach, was surprisingly alarming. #BagdownBenny and #StandUpStacey were splashed across the railway walls, and whilst the feeling of community wasn’t so immediately evident, the city had a lot of care behind it, a lot of attention to the natural world that seemed incredibly noticeable.
(You’ll notice I’ve refrained from talking about food on here, when that is one of the main things I pick up on any time I travel anywhere. I must admit it’s entirely slipped my mind, for once in my life, but perhaps I’ll pick it up next month. After all, I detailed every single dinner I had across my 6 weeks, so I’ve got plenty of ammo if necessary to unleash in all of your hungry mouths.)
After a beautiful interlude of Gardens by the Bay and the invigoration of Chinatown, it was finally time to embrace Thailand. My main takeaway was the absolute pleasure of attending four massages in Phuket/Khao Lak territory, each with varying degrees of oil usage, pressure and attentiveness. One lady managed to massage my scalp and text her child at the same time, and another was so thorough with my collarbone area I felt areas crack that I’ve never known to before. The last massage I had, merely two weeks ago, she physically walked on my back, a notion I didn’t register until I realised the whole flat palm of her foot was scrunched against my neck. Fascinating. This particular lady, the walker, let’s call her, massaged with such a rushed persistence I couldn’t help marvelling at her technique. She still gave me the full hour, but the pace at which she did it left my muscles aching and confused. I wasn’t necessarily perturbed, just fascinated by the feverish way she ran her hands up and down my arms and pounded by back free of its tension. The oil was menthol based and stung my nose to breathe, all the better as she crunched down on my shoulders and eased the hunch that I’ve been carrying for years on end. Another massage, she climbed so far up my thigh I nearly had to stop her, and yet another, I nearly sat, open mouth drooling at the feeling of someone rubbing an elbow down my back. We’ve been here before. We know how I feel about getting pampered. It’s a necessary facet to me.
I think I’ve done enough venturing for now. After all, what is inevitable at the end of every holiday? The day of travel. The planes. The check-ins. The hiding my rucksack from the counter so as not to be counted as extra hand luggage. Munching on ridiculously overpriced airport food. People watching cannot get any better than at an airport folks, remember that as you embark on your August pleasures.
Issue #10 - TEN! Line of poetry- ‘July is a Wound’ by m.k
‘lemonade has never tasted so bitter / and midsummer has never felt so cold.’
Liv Listens - ‘American Dreaming’, Sierra Ferrell.
I understand many of you are not remotely Americana/Country Folk fans, and that is absolutely fine. I am the exact opposite. This is an absolute gem of a song, full of heartbreak and longing, perfect for a wide open July evening. Its clear story about her remorse over constantly touring her whole life away mingles with the resounding cymbal/guitar combination to punctuate every words. What is American Dreaming, after all? Whatever Sierra says, goes.
I never know how long these newsletters are going to be until I hit publish and Substack gives me a little time estimation of how long it would take to read it, so if it is anything close to a ten minute read, I hope you enjoyed it. You thought I was apologising for it being too long? You should be warned, I thoroughly restrained myself, so much so I’m still going to be talking about this trip for many issues to come, so brace yourselves. Keep well in this confusing weather of a summer, and thanks for reading ten issues ! I don’t know, ten is always a big number. It doesn’t feel like it, I’ve got a lot of these left in me, by far, so make a wish on a dandelion or something. Bike rides are the best this time of year, from a seasoned sunset rider. All the best wishes,
always and authentically,
Olivia St Rottnest Burgess
xx
Amazing read I only apologise for being so late to it. Maybe what you were dealing with was emotional motion sickness? I’ve heard someone talk about this before… Anyway, we are so happy to have you back Liv. Please give bathroom updates in the next issue, so I know when I can impose myself upon you. If it means walking across your back so be it 🫶 - Elsie mools
Christ alive you saturate every experience with such magic and fervent feeling (even when those feelings are perhaps negative) that I feel as though I were a little creature being carried around with you on your adventures and seeing it for myself. Omg maybe I’m the quokka you put stole and put in your bag…
Also, many, many highlights of this read of course but the phrase that has stuck with me is ‘brilliant fool’. That is excellent and I can think of many a person to apply it to. Thank you for this delightful read <3