Part 2. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

11 minutes. 

660 seconds. 

Well actually, it was 11 minutes and 21 seconds. So technically it was 681 seconds.

That’s how long it took me to drive from McMahons Point to Centennial Park. From my place to the place where Picky was living & working as a nanny during her gap year in Sydney.

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. I’d met the most beautiful girl in the world and when she told me she was from Germany my heart sank. & then she said that she was living in Sydney for a year. My heart did an underwater u-turn and shot back up to the surface. I asked her where she was living. (Geographically speaking Sydney is a very big place). She said Centennial Park. My heart did summersaults. 

Course it did. I lived in McMahons Point. Centennial Park was only 11 minutes away. Well, 11minutes and 21 seconds.

We were a full 681 seconds apart. And we had a year.

A full year. That’s what we had. One full year. 365 days. It wasn’t a leap year. Pity. That would have given us an extra day.

But still, we had a whole year.

Picky had only just arrived in Sydney. The family she was nannying for had given her time off to pop to Thailand with a couple of nanny-friends she’d already met. Lucky me. Lucky us.

We stayed together on Koh Samui for the rest of the holiday. We spent most of our time sitting at the bar in a transvestite joint at the end of the Chaweng party strip. Drinking Heineken. I have no idea why. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I suppose that's love for you. It makes you do funny things. Like sit in bars drinking Heineken surrounded by women with hairy arms and huge Adam’s Apples. We loved it.

I left Koh Samui. Picky left two days later. I picked her up from Sydney Airport. We went straight to breakfast at Bondi Beach. And that was it. After breakfast we were inseparable. For 365 days. Totally inseparable. We did everything together. We had to. We knew that we only had a year. If we went out for dinner every single night, that was only 365 dinners. If we went to the Gold Coast every weekend, that was only 52 visits to the Gold Coast. The clock was ticking. We were in a race against time. There was fun to be had and we only had a year to have it. 

Over the course of that year we gave Sydney - and Australia - a right good nudge. A good, solid kicking. Together. The two of us. Partners in crime. Partners in time. Limited time.

The unfortunate thing about time is that it passes. And when you’re giving a place a right good nudge it has a nasty habit of passing more quickly than you’d really like it to. 


Bloody time. I hate it. It drags when you don’t want it to and it whizzes by when you wish you could put the brakes on it a bit. 

Tick tock, tick tock. 


Like I say, I hate time.


It passed.

I dropped Picky at the airport on January 10th 2005. It was the worst day of my life. I had a fistful of photos and a head full of memories.

And that was all. I didn’t have Picky. 

She had a place at University in Passau, close to Munich. We didn’t have each other. 

She walked through immigration. I told her not to look back. She looked back. I walked back to my car. It was the longest walk of my life. I’ve never felt so empty. So sad. So lonely. I was miserable. Bereft.

When you’re bereft because you’ve just lost the love of your life there’s only one place in Sydney for you.

The Oaks in Neutral Bay. I went straight there and ordered a Heineken. 

It didn’t taste the same. 

Standing at the bar in The Oaks, in that one single moment, I learnt two very simple lessons about life; first, Heineken tastes better when you’re drinking it with the girl you love and second, you don’t truly know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

I learnt both of those things then , and - as I write this blog with a Heneiken in my hand and with Picky feeding Pearl opposite me - I still believe both of them now.

More to follow ...

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