The bits of stuff that fall in the cracks between Life, Music and outrageous fortune.		  
 
 
 
November
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1) Sam waits for some intelligible words 2) Rick applies the blow torch 3) Vics vote for no change

4) Chris relaxes in a Brave New World 5) This way Mr Rudd..
 The week that was..
27.11.06 - One can delude oneself that nothing much goes on in one's life when one is a feckless musician with no visible means of support, but sometimes events thrust themselves upon one in rapid succession and challenge one's perceptions. For instance, my stepfather Sam (pic 1) and his wife Eve appeared in Melbourne on holiday from NZ last week, and on Wednesday Richard, Mary and I had a very happy lunch with them at the Lincoln Hotel in Carlton to celebrate. (Exemplary food and service incidentally - highly recommended). After months of trying to grow my hair, I finally lost patience and took myself down to
Rick at Siren (pic 2) in the Harp Village (appropriate, no?), updated my repertoire of risqué jokes and was expertly shorn. On Saturday we Vics were required to vote for no change in the government thank you, and later I took Chris out for a coffee and monitored his behaviour on the latest suite of drugs he's been prescribed. He's now had another one added to the original two to ameliorate the side effects I noticed last week (i.e walking round in circles), and while they haven't abated entirely, they appear to have diminished - a bit. He's obviously thriving on the eating-like-a-horse side effect, and his face has filled out and his skin is clear, (pic 4) so I hope that doesn't disappear altogether. Last night after the Boat Shed gig, I drove up to Richard and Mary's in Warrandyte and enjoyed the Curly Flat 2000 pinot I'd acquired the weekend previously, so it was somewhat of a coincidence that I found I had an appointment for a check up with my pinot-fancying dentist today. (pic 5) He claimed that he had a nice little pinot from the Adelaide Hills he was going to give me to try, but in the event he'd forgotten to bring it in. I guess that almost makes us even for the time I missed an appointment not so long ago..
 

Technology failure
20.11.06 - I s'pose this has happened to most of you already, and I guess that I'm lucky that it hasn't happened to me before now, but I felt very let-down and disappointed when my Nokia refused to wake up on Saturday morning. At first I thought that the battery was flat, but a couple of fruitless hours on the charger soon disabused me of this notion and I began to fret. I was commited to pick up Chris from Vermont St at 11.00, and the prospect of an interminable time at the Telstra shop with Chris was not the most appealing, so I determined to be guided by my anxiety about being phone-less for a day or two as to whether I tackled it immediately or waited till today (Monday).
Predictably I was a goner as soon as I left the house, so after I picked up Chris I went back home and retrieved my lifeless machine and headed to the Telstra Shop. For a change I only had to wait about ten minutes before an assistant found himself locked in my steely gaze with no way of retreat and had to acknowledge me and my bereavement, but he had the air of a man with no real solutions, and not only that, no spare phones to tide me over in the meantime.
When he confessed he couldn't even test my battery, I looked at Chris, (who had been pretty patient to that point), and said 'Let's go, son!' and we headed up the road to the uncharted territory that is Crazy John's.
About thirty minutes into the Crazy John's experience, Chris started walking around in circles, something he hasn't done since he was a toddler, but which the new medication regime seems to have reawakened. He kept this up until the deal was done (some thirty minutes later) and I had a new 3G Nokia (not working yet) in my possession. By then we were both starving, so I relented and we hit Hungry Jack's, which unsurprisingly seemed to be inhabited entirely by loud and extremely messy teenagers and furtive young marrieds who'd been blackmailed there by their brain-washed toddlers.
Chris demolished his cheeseburger in about forty seconds followed by his juice ten seconds later - and then got up to leave, another restless side-effect courtesy of his new drugs.
At this point I gave up on the day and decided to just enjoy whatever came my way, good or bad. It's a bit like sleepwalking - you're there, but you just don't know it and you just don't care. Works for me..
 

Think about tomorrow today..

Fun 'n' games
16.11.06 - My reading at the moment is the book we helped launch a few weeks ago, Iain McIntyre's Tomorrow Is Today, the story of Australian psychedelic bands (and Australian psychedelia in general) in the '60s and '70s. I'm enjoying it on a nostalgic level, and I'm finding out about the collateral stuff I was blithely unaware of at the time, but it's also helping put the present into some kind of focus, just as the title suggests it might. Listening to Jim Keays at Manchester Lane last night was like a calvalcade of musical trends encapsulated in the space of a few minutes - the Masters didn't go to any lengths to disguise their influences. The Masters also revelled in the psychedelic connection and seguéd gleefully into the Hippy era, which I guess was more the domain Spectrum favoured really.
I didn't mention in my gig report that Iain Meldrum rolled up just in time for the encore last night. He seemed a little worse for wear and, maybe as a consequence, greeted me more warmly than usual. We started to chat, but the
house music kicked in at the same time, so I had even less chance of understanding a word he said and rushed off to the toilet when the opportunity presented itself. Molly's a darling and a survivor, but to some degree we're all jealously presiding over the empty shell of our youth while trying to give the impression that any second the uninhibited and colourful person we once were might just burst out of our pallid skins and liven up de place.
(Hey - I just realised - stare at the pic of the book cover long enough and it goes into 3D!!)
 

Dick enjoys lunch with Mick		 Public transport etc.
9.11.06 - (The real 9/11 you'll notice). Bro' Dick and I arranged a few days ago to lunch today, so I determined to do the public transport thing and arrived at the local newsagent armed with a five dollar note and my Seniors' card. I scarcely go to the local newsagent these days since John and Mary sold the business, and the new guy (David, according to the tag on his black polo shirt), a big fellow to whom I took an instant dislike, leered at me triumphantly and announced, 'I haven't sold one of those all year'. I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he soon made it clear that he didn't sell Met tickets of any description anymore and I should take my chances buying one on the tram, or trek down to Middle Camberwell and buy the ticket I actually wanted there.
An indifferent start to my odyssey, but it was a nice day - particularly for Oaks Day, which is traditionally freezing - and I walked down to Middle Camberwell and bought my travel card there, and still got into town in plenty of time.
Richard and I had a spiffing lunch, only tempered by some sad news about our uncle, (we never think of him or refer to him as an uncle, but I guess he is), Michael Hayes, whom my father told me yesterday is in intensive care and quite seriously ill. To my mind, Michael looks like a slightly older version of Tim Finn, and that always makes me smile, and so I can but send him good vibes from the Land of Oz and wish him a speedy recovery.
I happened to be speaking to my father on his eighty-second birthday, and he was going for his annual licence renewal that afternoon and promising to 'drive the bitch around the block at a hundred miles an hour', which I suggested mightn't be the most prudent philosophy. I must ring him again soon and see how he went..
 

1) Julian Goldman 2) The Stonington mansion, slightly tatty but still standing 		Stonington Mansion - in the city of Stonnington
9.11.06 - Am I getting a social conscience? Julian Goldman rang a few weeks ago and asked if I would support a rally for the preservation in the public realm of the pictured mansion, and so I turned up with a swag of supporters and gently clapped the speakers on both sides of
the political spectrum and then drove up St Andrews for the Sunday arvo gig. (It's taken a while to get round to this piece). One issue I am getting worked up about is the David Hicks' fiasco - it's a less than becoming look for the Australian government to be allowing an Australian citizen to be stripped of any human rights by a foreign government, especially one for whom we've been blindly committing troops in the name of 'friendship'. What price Australian citizenship?
 
 
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