Essex Girls Downunder

INDTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER -- I say chaps, anyone for a spot of tennis? Mark Cooper from Melbourne Australia while a fan of the sport unfortunately does not have much time to enjoy it. As a duty manager for a city large hotel, he is way too busy dealing with high visitor numbers to Victoria for the annual Australian Open, the first grand slam tournament of the year on the international tour.

Visiting tennis fans, officials, sports media and players along with their entourages swell hotel guest numbers as is the case every January, and this year sees rising British tennis star Gemma Andrews staying at the hotel, along with her mother/manager Joanne, her father Tim and her twin brother David.

While father and son blend into the background, brassy mother and daughter duo Joanne and Gemma are no shrinking violets and make their feelings about everything and anything known in their loud voices with distinct accents that clearly show their origins lie in the Southern English county of Essex. So what will happen when the bratty tennis starlet and her pushy mother cross paths with Mark? Read 'Essex Girls Down Under' to find out!

The characters and events in this story are fictional, and any similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional. Only characters aged 18 and older are involved in any sexual activities. Please enjoy the story, and be sure to rate and comment.

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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, 1999

The hotel lobby, busier than usual this Monday morning, probably wasn't the ideal place to hold an impromptu press conference. But Joanne Andrews clearly held the opposite view to myself as the duty manager for this shift, and with journalists circling around her group of four.

Joanne, a noticeably tall woman at about 5 feet 11, had her long light brown hair tied back in a loose pony-tail with a pink scrunchie. Very pretty for a woman of any age much less a mid-40s mother of young adult children, Joanne seemed to take pride in showing off the attributes of her slim, fit and not to mentioned well-endowed body.

When bringing up twin babies, it was clear that neither Gemma nor her brother would ever have gone hungry as infants, Joanne's big breasts pushing at the pink fabric of her top, showing much of her cleavage. Joanne's pink mini-skirt was short -- very short -- and barely covered her knickers, her long legs on full display from the hem to her feet upon which she wore pink sandals that displayed most of her feet.

Pink nail polish on Joanne's toenails matched those on her fingernails, with pink ear-rings and a pink pendant around her neck clearly indicating that this was her favorite color. Joanne's bra strap visible thanks to her skimpy top was also pink.

Standing next to her mother, 19-year-old Gemma Andrews apart from her six feet one height and stunning good looks would not have stood out that much on an ordinary day. One would have thought that she was just another young tourist from the UK in the lobby of the hotel before heading out to enjoy a fine and sunny summer's day in Melbourne.

On her top half Gemma, whose long dark brown hair was tied back in a loose pony-tail wore a white tee-shirt of the popular UK six member boy-band 'Essex Boyz 4 Eva'. Gemma's tee-shirt swelled in the chest area, showing that in addition to her mother's good looks and her height, she had also inherited the gene for large breasts. Of course I could not see for myself and definitely not go up and ask, but from my estimation the teenager would need a D-cup bra to keep her massive breasts in check.

While mother Joanne's long legs were on full display thanks to a dangerously short mini-skirt, daughter Gemma's longer legs were fully displayed thanks to a pair of very short and tight denim shorts. Shorts so short that Gemma might as well just be wearing her knickers. Joanne was seemingly a huge fan of nail-polish, but her daughter wore no such polish either on her finger or toe nails, Gemma's feet visible due to the flip-flops she wore. It was what Gemma carried in her arms that made her stand out from any other young female tourist from the UK, a shiny silver cup for the Women's Singles final of the Adelaide Open captured the previous day.

The husband/father Tim was a tall skinny bespectacled man, probably a year or two older than his wife. He shared the same height as his lofty teenage daughter at six feet one and her dark brown hair too, while son David had the same height and light brown hair of his mother. Like his father David wore glasses, while the mother and daughter did not. Gemma did have sunglasses pushed back on top of her head, but not prescription glasses.

"So you must be so proud of your daughter winning the Adelaide Open yesterday afternoon," said a female journalist.

Joanne Andrews laughed, a shrill somewhat hyena-like laugh. "No, I'm like real disappointed. Of course I'm proud of Gemma, especially the way Gems crushed that American girl six-one, six-love. Tim's like real proud of her too, aren't you Tim?"

"Yes Joanne, I'm very proud of Gemma as well," said Tim, sounding like a robot in his reply.

A male journalist spoke up. "So Gemma, you've won your first title Down Under with your victory in South Australia yesterday. You must love that cup you're carrying?"

Gemma nodded, and in her reply the young English girl's accent and voice patterns were identical to those of her mother. "Yeah, it will look real great in the cabinet with all the other trophies I've won, won't it? And it will look real great with an Australian Open Women's Singles trophy when I win that too. Maybe I can get like a doubles or mixed doubles title too?"

"Clearly you like to win, Gemma?" asked the first female journalist.

Gemma laughed, like her mother previously sounding like a hyena. "No, I like to lose," she replied sarcastically. "Of course I like to win. Everyone likes to win, it feels great. If anyone tells you that winning ain't everything, they're either a liar or mentally retarded."

This young lady certainly had no shortage of confidence in herself. Gemma also seemed to have little restraint on her mouth, something that had earned the young woman plenty of media attention and controversy over the past year both on the tennis court and off it.

A second male journalist, a veteran sports columnist was next to ask a question. "So this time last year, nobody had ever heard of Gemma Andrews from Ilford Essex outside of the junior tour, and now you're one of the hot favorites to win the Australian Open. That's a massive rise in the rankings."

It was Joanne who answered. "Well, Tim and I always knew that Gemma was like real talented at tennis, even when she was a little girl having her first lessons at those courts in Ilford, right Tim?"

"Yes Joanne, Gemma always was a talented tennis player from an early age," said Tim.

"She won so much at tennis, and in like other sports too, that Tim had to put in extra shelves for all her trophies and prizes," said Joanne. "But Gems was just so great at tennis, it was obvious to anyone who like even saw her play one set on the junior tour that she was going to be a star. And then she like wins the Women's Singles title at the French Open last year as an unknown wildcard."

"The French Open is always the hardest to win," observed another female journalist. "Some champions on the tour win Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open many times, yet the French Open always eludes them."

"And my Gems wins it first time on the senior tour," said Joanne. "Clay is like, real hard to play on, the weather was bad and all the Frogs are packed into Roland Garros going 'boo' at Gemma like the whole time giving her the shits, and she goes and thrashes that Black American girl six one, six one. And Gemma's proved lots of times since then that it wasn't no freak, right Gems?"

"Right Mum," said Gemma.

"So where did Gemma get her amazing sporting abilities from?" a male journalist asked.

Joanne laughed. "From me of course, where else? Well me and her aunt, my sister and I were mad for tennis growing up and we played lots of other sports too, like track and field and netball. And of course I have to give credit to Tim, my husband and his brother were real good at football and cricket growing up and played at university and for a few years after. I mean, Liverpool, Man U or Chelsea weren't going to come knocking on Tim's door with a contract and a blank cheque and saying 'name your price', but he still played football at a reasonably high level. And like me and my sister, Tim and his brother were pretty good runners at track and field at school. All of Gemma's cousins are like real good at sports too, my sister's girl plays hockey semi-professional, so no wonder Gems is great at sports."

All through this I had noticed that the son David, with his skinny frame and nerdy appearance had been staying in the background trying to avoid any sort of attention, but to the young man's dismay and discomfort a female journalist noticed him.

"Well Mrs. Andrews, until this morning I didn't even know that Gemma had any siblings, much less a twin brother," she observed.

"Yeah, this is our son David, Gemma's twin brother." Joanne Andrews didn't seem overly interested in the observation.

"You must be so proud of your sister winning the title in Adelaide yesterday," said this journalist.

David looked nervous, as though anything he did say might be taken the wrong way. "Yes, I'm very proud of Gemma winning the title."

I noticed something odd about this family. Working in a hotel I had encountered many guests from the UK over the years, and got to know lots of different accents. This sharply varied from Australia, where despite its vast size one could only find three Aussie accents -- broad, standard and cultured, the latter quite rare. One could not tell if somebody was from Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart or Darwin simply from hearing them speak.

But with the Andrews family, both Joanne and Gemma had that very pronounced Essex accent. They sounded almost Cockney, but not quite. Yet the husband and son contrasted from the wife and daughter by having the standard UK accent from the South of England. They sounded nothing like the two women at all.

The older male journalist said, "So Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, you must be even more proud, having not one but two sporting champions in the family."

Joanne burst out laughing. "Two sporting champions? You gotta be like kidding me. Tim and I don't got a third kid back home who's real talented at sports. There's Gemma and that's all."

The media looked confused. "But from what you were saying, your family is very talented at sports," said one young man.

"Everyone but David," said Joanne. "Something must have gone wrong in my uterus back in 1979, because I give birth to Gemma, who's talented as you can get, and then there's David who's last picked for every team at school and then they argue over who gets him. Football, rugby, cricket, basketball, tennis; you name a sport and my son's bad at it. At school sports days David's only in the C division of the age race and runs last, and when there's interschool sports David's back at school in the library studying with the fat kids, the naughty kids banned from going on any sort of excursion and the spastics and retards from special education."

David blushed and I could sense his discomfort, but his mother kept right on talking. "I thought he might grow up to be good at athletics, good enough to come to Australia and be in the Sydney Olympic games next year given how many bullies who bothered him when he was a kid and chased him. Like one day my sister says she's seen David walking home from high school a long way from the usual route several days. So I check it out, and it turns out David's walking that way to avoid the kids at primary school who've been bullying him on the way home from school and taking money otherwise they'd beat him up. Another time at high school, David comes home with a bruise on his face, a ripped shirt and with his hair all wet from having it flushed in the loo. He didn't want to name the bullies what did it, but I make him, and next day I go up the school on the warpath and demand that the three boys responsible -- Alex, Jamie and Andy -- all get suspended for bullying my son. But as it turns out they're not boys, they're girls. And a year younger, and they all do ballet."

Joanne again laughed, evidently her son being bullied by younger children and girls in his younger years and being humiliated by having the incidents brought up again now were amusing to her. "David just seems to attract bullies even now. Like in Perth two weeks ago. Gemma's busy with practice for the Hopman Cup, and we go into town to check things out. David's walking down St Georges Terrace minding his own business, and this big guy in a black tee-shirt comes up to him and accuses him of perving on his girlfriend and wants to fight him. Lucky we were there and there were two cops as well."

The demoralized David looked like he might sink into the ground as his mother seemed to have developed verbal diarrhea about his miserable lot in life. "It doesn't help that David is so uncoordinated." She indicated her daughter's tennis trophy. "Like when the kids were little, I give David a tennis racquet and he doesn't got no idea of which end to hold it. Yet Gemma just knows what to do with it straight away, as you can see. Even in Adelaide just these last few days ago, David nearly walks into these two giant spheres in Rundle Mall, I mean they're bloody big enough. Then he walks backwards the next day and falls over this pig statue further up the mall, and there's four of them, all the size of regular pigs."

Gemma giggled. "That was so funny."

"Everyone else in the mall thought it funny too, there was this Chinese guy nearly wet himself laughing so much," said Joanne. "He also had a video camera, so who knows, our David might end up on 'Beijing's Funniest Home Videos' a few weeks from now."

Joanne then turned to her son and addressed him in a patronizing way like he was a child not a young man of 19. "Now David, you saw them big green things on the way in from the airport that ran in the center of the streets? They're called trams, don't walk into one of them, they're much less forgiving than the pig statues."

The older male journalist spoke up, evidently feeling bad for David. "So David, what do you like to do in life? I'm sure you're really good at academia, or musical or into theatre, artistic and the performing arts."

David looked unsure of what to say, but before he could reply his mother did just this.

"That's one of the problems with David, he just never seemed to get no talents," said Joanne. "At high school he was getting B's in the B group academically, he was no good at sports as you know, he doesn't have any musical or artistic talents. He did try out for the theater at high school but never got a role in the play and even when Tim and I tried David at Scouts, that didn't work out either."

Joanne then laughed and ruffled her son's hair, me noticing that he tried to pull away from his mother's touch. "But we all love David to bits in spite of everything, and he's useful too. Because David and Gemma are twins, if Gems ever needs a kidney transplant or heaven forbid gets cancer and needs bone marrow transplants, we've got a donor ready and waiting right here."

With that, Joanne decided that Gemma needed to rest after playing a tennis final in hot weather in Adelaide yesterday afternoon and put an end to the conference, the journalists going on their way no doubt with plenty to write about.

At the reception desk we were busy, guests checking in or out, guests going out for the day and leaving their keys with us, an elderly couple who evidently needed stronger glasses trying to write out a cheque for their room charges to date and the usual hustle and bustle of a busy hotel of a major Australian city.

Joanne got her herself, her husband and kids checked in -- the parents obviously in one room, the son and daughter having separate rooms -- and all on the top floor, with stunning views across the Melbourne city skyline. The family headed for the lifts, and as they did so, I noticed that Joanne's taste for pink extended to her panties too.

Reaching over to adjust her mini-skirt gave me a glimpse of the pink cotton fabric of her knickers that covered Joanne's bum. At the same moment, daughter Gemma seemed to have problems with a wedgie due to her very tight denim shorts. In the process of adjusting her shorts and underwear, a glimpse of white panty fabric told me that the daughter was wearing white knickers with a floral pattern of blue flowers today.

*

The Melbourne weather, dry heat and bright sunshine in the morning, had changed to a humid and overcast summer afternoon and thunderstorms likely for the evening as I finished my shift and handed over to the afternoon duty manager.

Leaving the hotel, I made my way through the city, with crowds of people milling around the pavements and on packed trams that were gliding up and down Collins, Flinders and Swanston Streets. Many more were flowing in and out of one of Melbourne's most famous landmarks, the ornate structure of the Flinders Street Railway station.

With the tennis tour in Melbourne for the Australian Open there were more visitors than usual, typical when there were major sporting events in the city. Working in a hotel I was well used to it. Plus as it was January it was also school holidays, which would add greater numbers to the CBD.

My favorite place in the city was the Princes Bridge, which began just after the Flinders Street Station and spanned the Yarra River and which joined Swanston Street with St Kilda Road, trams trundling back and forth, the wires sparking on one of them.

Standing near one of the bridge's ornate light fittings, I looked down at the muddy river waters of the Yarra flowing downstream, with the Williamstown ferry departing from Southbank for its hourly trip to Hobson's Bay. On the Southern side was the spire of the Arts Centre, and the entrances to the Domain and Botanic Gardens precinct with the Shrine of Remembrance further up the road.

Southbank as usual bustled with people walking along the riverfront, the large skyscrapers that housed some of Victoria's largest media outlets along with the casino looming over the shopping center. Ahead of me was the World Trade Center complex -- the low-rise one in Melbourne obviously nowhere near as spectacular as its New York counterpart with the Twin Towers that dominated the Manhattan skyline -- and to the northern side of the Yarra there were more skyscrapers to be seen.

There was the blue Rialto Towers building -- Melbourne's tallest although with the plans I had heard for the new Docklands precinct this might not last much longer -- the white Bourke Place over on Bourke Street and a somewhat gothic bank building that towered over what had been one of Melbourne's tallest in the 1960s, a curved brick building on Collins Street with a distinctive green turret.

Among other tall office towers in Melbourne's city streets to the North there was another major bank building very tall but plain in design long stripped of its tallest building in Victoria when the Rialto topped out in the mid-1980s, along with the distinctive black Melbourne Central Tower, this building's two antennae looking much like horns. And to the East and along the trendy end of Collins Street stood two massive art deco towers that eclipsed other skyscrapers in the area.

Turning around I looked down the river, where the super-structure and light towers of the Melbourne Cricket Ground stood out. Next to this was the Melbourne Park complex, the home of the Australian Tennis Open and where many pedestrians were headed to catch games on the opening day of play.