Love...Under Different Skies by Nick Spalding

writing jobs of any kind in this area. Any rare positions that do open are snapped up at near light speed before I get so much as a chance to fill out an application form. Which brings me to the other reason I can’t find work: I was unlucky enough not to be born Australian. If you weren’t educated in the Australian system, you can forget about any of your qualifications meaning a damn thing here. I have degrees and postgraduate certificates coming out of my arse, but as they were all earned in the UK I might as well have a PhD in advanced chicken molestation.
    “Something will come up,” Laura tells me and gives me one of those sympathetic smiles you never want to have aimed at you.
    She then launches into a lengthy diatribe on how chocolate manufacturing out here is ten times more efficient than it is back home. I continue to rub her feet while drifting off into a morose fantasy where I have to offer sexual favours to passing Japanese tourists to earn enough money to buy myself a degree in creative writing from an online Australian university.
    When this chance for a new life came along, I spent all my time fantasising about long golden beaches, ninety-degree temperatures, and barbecues. I really didn’t think about what I was going to do for a long-term career until we actually got here. I was so happy that Laura had been offered a well-paying job—and would therefore dig us out of the mire I’d resolutely put us in, thanks to getting fired from the paper—that I didn’t stop to think about the ramifications on my own future employment, and my sense of self-worth should I not find something remunerative to do with my time.
    Right now I’m a kept man, and it frankly makes me feel a bit sick. I’m very proud of Laura for what she’s accomplishing with Worongabba, but I hate the idea of her having to support us both. Oh, I can clean the house from top to bottom every day and rub her feet until they’re worn down to nubs, but I still don’t feel like I’m providing much to the family unit. It’s a very caveman-like attitude to take I know, but I just can’t help myself.
    The lack of work and acres of free time wouldn’t be so bad if it would just stop fucking raining for five minutes. In previous weeks I’ve been able to take constitutional walks along the breathtaking beaches we’re lucky enough to be living right alongside. Our apartment is less than a hundred yards’ walk to the kind of sandy slice of heaven you usually only see glaring at you from the pages of the nearest travel brochure. I’ve grown quite used to ambling my way along the boardwalk, dropping into the town centre to pick up the local paper, and spending the next twenty minutes in a fruitless search for employment before throwing my hands up and buying an ice cream. It’s the kind of lifestyle I’d be insanely jealous of if I weren’t the one living it.
    But then it started to rain and my life became a living hell.
    The two-bedroom apartment we live in isn’t all that big. It’s part of a three-storey complex built around a small swimming pool and is obviously designed with the transient vacationer in mind. Not a day goes by without seeing a new collection of tourists wheeling their suitcases in through the main gate, happy expectant looks on their faces.
    The lack of floor space is fine when you can get out and about, but when you’re confined thanks to the inclement weather, it’s akin to being in a prison—admittedly, the minimum security kind with cable TV and attractive views from the window, but a prison nonetheless.
    Thus I am bored out of my tiny mind.
    Which is frankly ridiculous considering I’m in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with access to a plethora of entertainment venues designed to keep the locals happy when the weather is a bit crappy, as now. The fine public transport system of Queensland could carry me to any number of cinemas, theatres, bowling alleys, amusement arcades, and shopping