A vision of metropolitan glamour

Change is a gradual process. Often, while we are changing as human beings, we are not aware of the process of change. It can be so gradual in fact, that you will not suspect a thing, until one day BAM! you wake up and realise that your sole criteria in a prospective male partner is the ability to spell correctly.

This can be troubling for some people. Others embrace change. I think that I first became aware of the change I had gone through when my old friend from Sydney came to visit me last weekend. As he stepped out of the cab he looked somewhat like a movie star to my Alice Springs-oriented eyes. He looked clean and suave, like someone from a magazine and sported a pair of stylish Wayfarers. He spoke in whole sentences and didn't have bloodshot eyes. His palms were soft, from a life as something other than a "bacon and egg builder." In Sydney, my friend seems relatively normal, but after two months in Alice Springs he appeared to me like a vision of metropolitan glamour. 

Despite the relative rarity of men that don't spell "great" as though it's something one does with parmesan cheese, I'm coming to think there's a certain magic about this town. There's something about the slow-paced, community-oriented lifestyle in Alice Springs that is extremely seductive. I love my metropolitan glamour, Wayfarers and all (and it's possible that once ensconced in Sydney life again, the romantic hue around the Alice will fade) but, cycling home this afternoon, the sky was a clear blue backdrop to the red ochre Macdonnell Ranges and I thought "It just doesn't get much better than this."