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AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog
12 July – 8.22 p.m.
Hey.
Does anyone know if Australia has a similar healthcare system to theUK? I mean, just as an example, if we were to, say, dump a person outside an A&E department and drive away, would they get treated for free or turned away for not having insurance? Asking for a friend.
Ta, Axx
3 Comments· 94AWOLs · 145 Super Likes
COMMENTS:
Eva Slate
|What have you been up to?!!
Fiona Edwards
|Dear Alice, do not worry about a thing, I slipped $30 into her sports bra. Love mum xxxxx
Alice Edwards
Replying to Fiona Edwards
|So we can add sexual assault to the list of crimes we will be charged with. Great.
‘I’m walking in rightnow,’ I type. ‘And it’s very difficult to walk and type, the only reason this makes any sense is autocorrect. So please stop messaging me,I AM COMING RIGHT NOW.’
I’m not even late for God’s sake. Honestly, there was no way I’d be late. I’m too happy and excited about it.
I’m about to meet up with Joe and Mark.
Joe got to Sydney yesterday and they’ve had a fulltwenty-four hours togetherto talk things through and probably do other things – wink. I’m trying not to be too over the top with my enthusiasm because I don’t want to scare Mark. He’s only just starting to let me into this part of his life and I don’t want him running back into his repressedhidey-hole. But I can tell he’s happy. Even just on his texts, urging me to hurry up and get to the hotel already, there is an irrepressiblyjaunty tone to his sentences. Like he is smiling and he can’t help it.
I think, y’know, that he might be in love.
So the other day he finally filled me in onJoe andMark’s Relationship: The Back Story.
They’ve been friends forever, this much I knew. I also knew Joe was madly in love with Mark, but I had no idea for how long. Basically, every now and again, Joe would drunkenly confesshis feelings and want to talk about it. But Mark would brush him off, refusing to even discuss the possibility of their friendship becoming something more. He laughed the whole thing off, much like he did with me when I brought it up. So yeah, Joe dated other people and tried to move on, but just ... couldn’t. He knew deep down that this was it for him. Mark was his lobster. And for some reasonhe hung on in there all this time, hoping. Which I swear to God would’ve never worked for a straight woman, desperately waiting for a man to change his mind – but this is not the time for a rant about sexist double standards and toxic masculinity.
Anyway, it’s actually happening at last.
I would really like to be able to take all the credit for sparking this wholelove-revelation in Mark– believe me, I tried to take the credit – but, to be honest, it sounds like he’d already pretty much reached the obvious conclusion on his own.
They’d become so much closer travelling around Thailand together, and with hindsight, I think a lot of Mark’s grumpiness on the trip was to do with the creeping realisation of his feelings. I guess he was frustrated with himself and struggling tocomprehend things. He’d been in denial for so long. But then we went to that Ayahuasca retreat and he says pretty much all of his experiences and hallucinations were centred around Joe.
Which made me feel way better. Sure, maybe I tried to get a selfie with the universe, but at least I didn’t waste my experience mooning over a booooooy.
Either way, it rather forced a more intensive internalconversation for my brother. He could no longer deny how much Joe meant to him.
But because Mark is Mark, still, he fought it.
It was only when me and him had that huge row at the hostel and he stormed off, dragging Joe along with him, that things reached a kind of breaking point. After they left me, they checked into a hotel nearby, where they had their own big fight.Mild-mannered,lovely,ever-patient Joe told Mark that he was being a dick, and that they should never have abandoned me in the middle of Asia. He said it was laughable that Mark told me off for being in denial, when he’s been in his own world of denial for years and years. He said he was done, for good this time, and was going to head off to Australia on his own, to travel up the east coast and ‘cool off’.He packed his bag and left, telling Mark on his way out that things were going to change between them. He wasn’t prepared to be his adoringpuppy-dog any more.
Mark told me he sat in that hotel room, fuming and ranting in the mirror about the both of us, before finally coming to some kind ofself-realisation. He followed Joe to Australia and waited in Sydney for his true love to come backto him.
