Eagles

admin

When the child bride and I relocated in April 2017 it had taken 12 months of marketing, six months of bridging finance the mafia would have been proud of, countless sleepless nights and almost as many grey hairs before we could move out of our acreage based country house and into our city based townhouse. On Friday this week (it’s now Sunday) my mother put her house on the market and on Saturday (yesterday) received an offer which was bang on the money. I consider this rather unfair. As unfair in fact, as favourite musicians dying while at the height of their powers. Which brings me to last night’s Eagles concert.

It was our sixth – 1976, 1994, 2005, 2009, 2015 and last night, the first since Glen Frey left the building in 2016. Now 2005 was called the Farewell 1 Tour which I guess makes last night’s concert part of the Farewell 4 Tour although they appear to have abandoned that naming protocol like Led Zeppelin stopped numbering their albums after 2,3 and 4.

Things have changed in so many ways, not least the Eagles line-up and their relative popularity. Back in 1976, the CB and I were wandering past the now demolished Festival Hall in Brisbane’s CBD and noticed on the hording above the main entrance that the Eagles would be appearing so we walked in to the box office where there was no queue and bought two tickets on the side, half way up and about 15m back from the stage. For all subsequent concerts getting similar tickets is like winning the lottery and you just about have to anyway to pay for them. So we each sold a kidney (now we’re on dialysis – the other two went for the Rolling Stones tickets a few years ago) and got tickets in a similar location, albeit in a different venue from all those years ago at Festival Hall.

As it happened, the seat location turned out to be rather problematic. I have to admit I’ve been doing it rather tough these past few weeks. Not genuine refugee tough but compared with a month ago, a bit challenging. If you read the few posts prior to this one you’ll see I had dental issues, an infection which turned out to be in my prostate which sent my PSA from a relatively benign 2.1 to something better measured by the Doomsday Clock and more recently a stiff neck which feels like my vertebrae have been fused together. So last night I had to either swivel to the right in my seat or gingerly turn my head to get a good look at what was going on. I had managed to turn it enough to be able to look straight at the stage but now my head is permanently locked at 10 minutes past the hour.

You thought this was going to be a review of the concert didn’t you and up to now the connection between this blog entry and the concert has been somewhat tenuous. But here goes.

The vocals and musicianship were predictably flawless so I’ll leave those aspects alone but there was one exception.

Joe Walsh forgot the first two lines of “Walk Away” and the magnificent screen behind the band had a ten foot high picture of his face on it at the time. They carried on regardless and never missed another beat. Status Quo would have admitted it and pissed themselves laughing about it but we’re dealing with a more serious entity here although everyone had a chance to chat and the mood was pretty relaxed throughout. But Joe is one of my favourite guitar players – the flamboyant artist to Steuart Smith’s technician – so he gets away with it. Add Vince Gill who selfishly combines terrific soaring vocals with stunning guitar chops – why does one person get to quarantine the outstanding talents of two – and you have a guitar line-up second to none in modern music.

A band with three gun guitarists plus two other competent players and a bass player lined up across the stage is my kind of band. Add five different lead vocalists and back-up musos who’ve been with them for decades plus an unrivalled back catalogue and I’ll be lining up for number 7 if the opportunity arises. By adding Vince Gill and especially Glen’s son Deacon Frey to the line-up, the average age of the band has plummeted. It doesn’t make the older guys any younger unfortunately and while 60 may be the new 40 (I’m prepared to stretch this even further) I’m not sure we’ll get to see 7 in Brisbane, if at all.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Brisbane concert (or Sydney, of Melbourne I expect, especially Melbourne) without the obligatory clown yelling “Aussie Aussie Aussie” and expecting the predictable follow-up. It didn’t work the first time and he got howled down the second time so mercifully, there wasn’t a third. I guess this is a reflection of the evolving demographics at Eagles concerts. We took our kids when they were youngsters (Hell Freezes Over in ’94 I think) and there were families there last night doing the same. So it wasn’t quite the Hollies or Status Quo crowd who we are starting to recognize and nod acquaintance to. But no doubt we’ll see elements of them and most of the Eagles crowd at Fleetwood Mac later in the year.

And to the prick who kicked a bottle of water all over my man-bag (phone, wallet, glasses, keys if you must ask), thanks for making it an even more eventful night.

My mother thinks Frank Sinatra was the duck’s nuts. I’m happy to listen to the duelling guitar solo (duet?) at the end of Hotel California on a continuous loop until I disappear into the flames.

For the record, here’s the set list. There were three encores and to all of those people who left after the first and second encores, hahahahahahahahahaha.

  1. Seven Bridges Road (all)
  2. Take it Easy (Deacon Frey)
  3. One of These Nights (Don Henley)
  4. Take it to the Limit (Vince Gill)
  5. Tequila Sunrise (Vince Gill)
  6. Witchy Woman (Don Henley)
  7. In the City (Joe Walsh)
  8. I Can’t Tell You Why (Timothy Schmidt)
  9. New Kid in Town (Vince Gill)
  10. Peaceful Easy Feeling (Deacon Fry)
  11. Love Will Keep Us Alive (Timothy Schmidt)
  12. Lyin’ Eyes (Vince Gill)
  13. Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away (Vince Gill)
  14. Those Shoes (Don Henley)
  15. Already Gone (Deacon Frey)
  16. Walk Away (Joe Walsh)
  17. Life’s Been Good (Joe Walsh)
  18. The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
  19. Heartache Tonight (Vince Gill)
  20. Funk #49 (Joe Walsh)
  21. Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley)

Encore 1

  1. Hotel California (Don Henley)

Encore 2

  1. Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
  2. Desperado (Don Henley)

Encore 3

  1. Best of My Love (Don Henley)

 

eagleslcajpg-8d2013814013bb8a

Rule 1 – No Dick Heads

admin

We’ve all started new positions during our working life. Admittedly some people do it only once and these are generally public servants or Japanese although the job-for-life the previous generation of Japanese workers expected is not quite as ubiquitous these days.

Before you start a new position you generally have to negotiate your way through an application to get an interview, then fill in some questionnaires to make sure you’re not a psychopath or a sociopath. And here’s the rub.

Did you ever wonder, once you’ve got to know your workmates, how some of them jumped those hurdles. Some of them wouldn’t be able to jump rope if it was lying limp on the ground. How did these thoroughly unlikeable individuals slip through the fuck-wit filter? Were they interviewed by like minded people? Are they put there as a management challenge for everyone else? Do they know someone or have photos. Or are they simply the beneficiaries of the only job generating programme left-leaning governments throughout the world know – employing more and more bureaucrats. Because let’s face it, many of these people work in government. One of the few privileges private enterprise enjoys compared with government is the ability to fire someone. That person has to have committed an atrocity three times or three different atrocities before human resources will stop wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth long enough to risk a trip to the unfair dismissal tribunal. But such are the “rights” of employees over management these days.

Back to our work-place wankers. You know the type. They work to rule absolutely when it advantages them. Breaks are taken at exactly the time they are meant to be taken. This doesn’t necessarily mean one returns to work at the allotted time. One has to finish one’s cigarette, doesn’t one. They are the ones who loudly assert their rights at work. If there’s a union presence they will utilise it as often as my mother calls her local member of parliament. They will leave their workplace exactly at knock-off time even if it means leaving a nail half banged into a piece of wood. And they will gossip, maliciously.

There is an Australian Football club that famously implemented a “no-dickheads” rule which is a bit like the fuck-wit filter mentioned above. This meant that if you were up yourself to the extent that you disrupted the team’s cohesion, it didn’t matter how good you were, you weren’t welcome and you weren’t selected. And it worked because the club enjoyed considerable success.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will work everywhere. Imagine applying it to an NBA franchise. Overnight you’d be down to about three players. And NFL teams would lose whole defensive lines – you know the ones who carry on like they’ve cured cancer after making one tackle. Unfortunately when you see an eight year old soccer player put on a Hugh Jackman routine when they score a goal, to the raucous cheers of Mum and Dad, you know the future supply of dickheads is secure.

When the no-dickheads rule is rolled out to all work places in the country we will have platoons of embittered ex-administration officers roaming central business districts all over the country, stopping outside their previous places of work, sucking on fags and abusing passers-by. In the US they will occasionally (rarely thankfully) return to their old workplaces with guns. Stringent application of the no-dickheads rule at the appropriate time could have nipped a tragedy in the bud. Or more likely simply shifted it to another location.

Unfortunately it seems we are stuck with these people and now that political correctness has sunk it’s cold dead claws into every facet of life, especially the fun bits, they can claim victim hood status as well. Best to just ignore them.

What You Will

admin

I received this letter from the future. It’s rather a long one so I figured it needed a title. On reading it “Brave New World” sprung to mind but that’s been taken as has “Back to the Future” and even if “How Green was My Valley” hadn’t been taken, I wouldn’t have used it. No, it needs a unique title. “Earl” fits the bill – get it, Earl, title, but “My Name is Earl” is also legally off-limits. So let’s call it “What You Will”. Here it is:

It all began in the second quad-mester of 2019. The second quad-mester used to be called autumn but seasons were banned because summer in the southern hemisphere discriminates against winter in the northern hemisphere. Anyway this was when the fascist scum Morrison called the last election. We haven’t had one since – that one was enough apparently.

Billy-boy won that election but then suffered an unfortunate accident when he stupidly tried to fake way too much sincerity, experienced a stress induced Uriah Heep attack, turned dark green (if only briefly) then black as coal (how ironic and culturally appropriating?) and kicked the proverbial. We now have the Utopia we have always dreamt of but didn’t dare to articulate before, under pain of terminal ridicule and Goebbellian censorship, except on the ABC and free to air TV channels, in Nine/Fairfax publications, on countless blogs and in the halls of every university and school in the nation. We will not be silenced any longer by the Howards and Morrisons of this world and their bastard devil’s spawn like Tony Abbott.

Person how things have changed since those dark days. Praise the Justine because everyone has a disability pension now as it was discriminatory to allow some to have one and others to not. For a couple of weeks there it was $150,000 per year until Gina’s and Andrew’s and James’ and Kevin’s money ran out. Now it’s down to $1.50 per week but we don’t actually see it as it has to be saved in a special account for the good of the collective.

Also, everyone has a right to public housing for the same reason we all have disability pensions. My mate Johnno, lucky bastard, he got Gina’s place after the billionaires were told to leave. Who knew there were so many billionaires in Australia – about three million if you include the kids. I actually knew one and didn’t even realise it. The internet guy was a billionaire, or I assume he was. I thought he just fixed things but he actually ran his own business and employed two people. I’ve no idea whether he took any Aussie dollars with him when he left but I hope he did because they’re completely useless now. Those greedy bastards deserve everything that’s coming to them wherever they go. He gave me a cheery wave as he boarded the plane and shouted “read Atlas Shrugged you moron”. Now I believe “Atlas Shrugged You Moron” is a book but I haven’t read any books. They don’t teach reading in schools anymore other than as a gender metaphor in interpretive dance.

I wonder where they did go. Not to Indonesia of course because we banned Indonesia. They light fires there and kill things to eat. And they have cars. And they’re not contributing to population control to save the planet like we are. Their population has gone up by five million in the last 12 months according to the Information Directorate In Our Town. Ours has gone down by 8 million in the same time so I ask you in (please excuse) Hockey speak, “who’s doing the heavy lifting now?”

The place has improved so much and we’ve never been happier. Justine, who’s been in charge since the revolution after the last election and had nothing to do with Bill’s accident, honest, was seen to skip (once). She threw a Birkenstock, holed a tight and cracked a smile and unfortunately her face fell off but we screwed it back on and re-inserted the lemon so everything is back to normal.

It’s a bit tricky actually finding out what’s going on in the world now. Five states are without the internet because, as I said earlier, the internet guy left. Apparently Tasmania still has it but of all of the people who’ve tried to swim across Bass Strait, none have made it back, so it’s a bit of a mystery. That running dog poopy pants Murdoch Minor doesn’t pump his propaganda into our sub-conscious anymore either. We ran him out of town on a rail and he took his 150% of the media with him. So we don’t know anything now but at least what we don’t know is pure and unadulterated.

“Unadulterated” is now the official adjective for the ABC. Strangely, many of the once familiar faces are no longer there. Okay, we haven’t had power for a while but even when we did we noticed that they disappeared from our screens about the same time as when the planes left. We assume they went to heckle and see the billionaires off the premises but they never came back. They were foot-soldiers for the revolution so surely none of them were billionaires as well?

As I mentioned, the power’s off now. My windmill won’t turn because there are three dead birds jammed in it and a meteor hit my solar panel (curse you Tony Abbott). But that’s okay because food’s really cheap so I don’t need a refrigerator. I can put caviar on my toast (if the toaster worked) because it’s as cheap as corn flakes. Justine tells us the food’s going to last at least for another month so nothing to worry about there.

Unfortunately the pharmacists all left when Justine threatened to end their monopoly so the drugs ran out six months ago. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, there’s been an extremely responsible reduction in our population so the planet can be saved. This means we don’t need as many drugs (or as much food for that matter) as we did before, so win-win. The latest government forecast has the population reducing even more dramatically in coming months which is fantastic and a testament to environmentally responsible totalitarianism. Shame on you Abbott you fascist pig for encouraging the nuclear family and responsible family planning. Nuclear – I ask you?

It’s amazing how much we’re saving on food and drugs (if we had any) and power (if we had any) by responsibly allowing the population to once again reach equilibrium with our incredibly fragile environment. It’s so good to see the rainforest reclaiming the CBD. Another high rise, those phallic symbols of the capitalist scum, just fell over. Good; that’s more building material for those who have the absolute right to public housing but don’t actually have a public house because there aren’t enough after the May razing got out of hand during the celebration of Democratic People’s Freedom Day. We’re intending to pull down more of these huge apartment buildings to provide even more material to build even more public housing. Next job – find some builders. There’s no problem finding wrecking crews and it stands to reason that if you can pull it down you should be able to put it back up again so that’s another box ticked.

This is too easy. Have to go now; the Population Enhancement Transgression  Association is coming through the window.

The Hollies – a Tribute to Time Served

admin1 Comment

The child bride and I took off for the Gold Coast on Thursday. The last time we went, to see Status Quo (reported on here), we hadn’t planned the most efficient route and therefore encountered about 47 red lights. This time we did it right which is just as well because the CB drove. I’ve been feeling like death warmed up since Wednesday or as an old boss of mine used to say “half fucked and let go”.

But I wasn’t going to let that prevent us from seeing the Hollies so, as I said, the CB drove. Now I’m not going to comment on her driving because we are safely back at home now. Suffice to say, I don’t tail-gate, I don’t lane-hop and I manage to keep my road rage more or less under control. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, as a great philosopher once said.

We’ve been lucky enough to see most of our musical heroes from our yoof so while it was great to see the Hollies last night, I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities because they tour relentlessly. They are probably the longest surviving band in history having performed and toured every year since the formative year of 1962 and the eventual settlement of most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame line-up in 1963. Bobby Elliot and Tony Hicks have been with the band since 1963 – no hiatuses (hiati?), no taking a year off to pursue individual projects. Now that’s stamina. Actually, we may not get to see them here again because as you can calculate, those two are getting on a bit.

After performing Bus Stop, Carrie Anne, He Ain’t Heavy etc etc etc for all of those years you’d expect them to be pretty tight. Of the other four band members, two have been there almost 30 years and the other two 15 years. So they are able to reproduce that typical sound. Peter Howarth, the lead singer said some heckler in the audience at a previous concert yelled out “I didn’t expect you to be this good”. That sound was honed back in the 60’s with some rather accomplished session musicians – how about Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Elton John.

And when they came on stage at the start, they were all dressed in white shirt, black tie, black trousers and shiny black shoes. The drummer had his top button undone and his tie was all over the place but that’s drummers for you. I haven’t seen performance uniforms like that since I went to see the Halle Orchestra in Manchester in 1973.

The crowd was the Status Quo crowd and the Eagles crowd – SKI’s (spending the kid’s inheritance), COB’s (cashed up bogans), GLAM’s (greying, leisured, affluent, married) and GOFER’s (genial old farts enjoying retirement). We were six rows from the front so I’m speculating on those who were behind up but I’m pretty confident in my CUOA (compulsive use of acronyms).

So as I said, I’ve not been well, in fact I’m not well now so this post is not quite as hilariously funny and irreverent as previous ones. The concert was a welcome distraction but I hit the wall a few hours later and woke up at 4.30am thinking I was sleeping on the inside of a water bed. Hopefully a course of antibiotics will do the trick. Personally, I think it was the mouthful of bacteria I experienced during a tooth extraction two weeks ago. Maybe the course of antibiotics that followed didn’t complete the job. Let’s hope (well you don’t have to but I certainly do) this course does the trick.

It’s all I can do to tap on these keys at the moment but it just goes to show – if the desire and incentive are there, adrenaline will get you though.

Pull the Other One

admin1 Comment

The child bride has just finished a tooth straightening exercise with our dentist. It was only one tooth plus a minor renovation of those either side so we only needed to take a second mortgage on the house and sell our granddaughter to people smugglers to pay for it. Her completion neatly coincided with my horrendous tooth ache – the first toothache I’ve had since 1989. That one resulted in a root canal procedure, a technique first perfected by the Spanish Inquisition.

How do dentists do that? The last time I went to the dentist was a decade ago. More fool me, you say but in my defence, I have pretty healthy teeth although the one gradually turning black, which is front and centre (I think that’s the correct anatomical term) after said root canal would suggest otherwise. I haven’t been for years but as soon as the CB’s work is finished, mine begins – weird. And I haven’t actually seen anyone else in the surgery when I’ve had cause to pay a visit. Maybe that means dentists are good time managers compared with doctors who are the worst time managers in the world. I doubt the President of the United States would get in on time when he reports to his local GP. Or maybe the CB and I are sufficient to prop up the dentist’s lavish lifestyle and pay for his investment properties.

What was left of the aching tooth, after two pieces had broken off while eating (and been swallowed) in previous years, was removed. It was that or another root canal job. Prior to removal and after much poking around I was overwhelmed by an awful smell. I think dog shit is the worse smell on the planet but this was close. And it came from my mouth. So it seems I had the part of an exploratory root canal that involves the flushing out of a miniature balloon full of the sort of bacteria you could clear a football stadium with.

That was step one in a process that will take the best part of this year such are the cracks and gaps and ageing fillings scattered through my mouth. I know I said I had reasonably healthy teeth and it’s true but any dentist worth his amalgam is going to find a litany of problematical situations requiring rectification. And thus it is so.

So today was two fillings at the very back. I yearned to have that vast Julia Roberts mouth because….. well, we’ll leave it there.

Now local anaesthetic is all very well but two things. Most people would agree that the dentist’s drill makes the most frightening noise ever and I think you could put your house on that. There’s the small one that makes the weeeeeezing, Nazgul in the distance sound and the coarse one which makes the rumbling, crunching sound. And the local anaesthetic doesn’t extend to all of the surrounding teeth so I swear some of them were throbbing in sympathy. Incidentally, the coarse rumbling drill alerted me to the fact that my mouth has perfect acoustics. I’m sure Monty Python could work with that. But no, when the rumbling drill got into a certain position I could instantly hear a 747 taking off.  It was the closest I’ve ever come to levitation.

So me and my teeth (and gums – apparently they’re important too) have started a journey which will take us…..well I’m not sure. I guess preventative maintenance will eliminate the possibility of a weekend of toothache, the cure for which, in the first 24 hours is not pain killers but cold beer, and lots of it. It’s pain killers and lots of them in the second 24 hours.

 

Skin in the Game – Part 2

admin1 Comment

It seems the bloody spec on the base of my left thumb was a basal cell carcinoma. I say “was” as it is no longer attached to me. It may still “be” but when the pathology lab has finished with it, it will most definitely “be” a “was”.

Hopefully what was removed yesterday will be the end of it, at least for the immediate left thumb area otherwise it will eventually resemble a target as ever increasing rings of me are removed. The first excision was about half the size of my little finger nail. That proved insufficient as the little bastard was sending out scouting parties. Yesterday’s effort (removed by a plastic surgeon) was the size of a 10 cent piece. If she didn’t get it all this time because this little carcinoma was particularly adventurous then next time I imagine we may be looking at something resembling the size of a squash ball.

The upshot of this was that I no longer have the use of my left arm. Only temporarily of course but as this picture indicates, I’ll have a very smelly arm by the time that lot’s removed.

arm

That seeming over-reaction is to keep a skin graft in place. A similarly sized piece of me was removed from my upper inner arm and sewn onto my thumb.

The upside is that there is a five day cricket test match between India and Australia underway and the most energy I am allowed to expend is waving the remote in the general direction of the TV. And picking up a glass. With my right hand. And thankfully wine bottles have screw caps. Well Australian wine bottles do. That Portuguese number which was in our admirable liquid based Advent Calendar had a cork in it so I had to prevail on the child bride to do the honours. We’re dreamin’ of a white and red and bubbly Christmas.

If I don’t get back to you before the 25th, have a good one.

Excuse Me While I Run And Hide

admin

The CB retired from teaching recently. I’ve been running my own business from home for a few years so this was the first time we had been thrust together all day every day, well most days, for……ever. As a consequence I felt it incumbent on me to give her (and females generally) some advice as to how this might work and what my future expectations would be……ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Men know why I am bent double laughing hysterically.

To try to disguise the fact it’s me speaking, I occasionally lapse into the third person. This isn’t me being pretentious, it’s my instinctive defence mechanism kicking in. Notwithstanding, here goes:

1. Working – Now that you’ve retired you will only be expected to undertake paid employment for two days a week. Beer doesn’t grow on trees you know.

2. House Work – That house ain’t going to clean itself my dear. Whilst your husband may be able to fly the space shuttle (in theory) don’t for a second expect him to understand the intricacies of a clothes cleaning implement unless it comprises a rock and a river. The same applies for that crushed wine glass shard sucking machine and the “hose in a box” that blasts shrivelled mushrooms out of pizza boxes but makes the boxes very soggy in the process. Remember your life-long aversion to lawn mowers? Chickens are on their way home to sleep as we speak.

3. Clothing – My expectations as to what you wear around the house are few. As has been the case since the dawn of time, the outside layer is irrelevant to all people except other women. And here’s a secret – no one cares if your arse looks big in it. Men are infinitely more concerned with whether other bits look big in it but you i.e. women generally, never ask that question, do you.

4. Underclothing – Now we’re talking. We know the transition from frilly and filmy to industrial strength has been happening by stealth for years but this need not happen. He does still have a pulse you know.

5. Sport – Now that you have more time on your hands you’ll be required to indulge your partner with feigned interest in pretty much every sport imaginable. The indifference of previous years, excused through pressures of work will no longer be tolerated. But keep the questions to a bare minimum. You may even learn to love the UFC. What’s not to like about two cute, diminutive, young ladies beating ten types of tripe out of each other. You could be sitting with your man right now (in between fetching the beers, sandwiches etc) watching two very average West Australian batsmen break every record in the book against the Worst Indies at the spiritual home of world cricket – Blundstone Arena, Hobart, as happened a couple of years ago.

6. Drinking – You’re still allowed to drink. This was going to be at number 1 but I wanted to make you sweat.

7. Children – You’ll like this one (and what’s not to like about the others so far). Now’s the time when your cash hoovers are replaced by a second generation of cash hoovers. The best part is that they now live somewhere else so you can hide when you see them coming up the driveway.

8. Food Preparation – Your devotion to the kitchen is very much appreciated. No, really. Now if you could only look a bit more like Nigella when you do it. But forget about the accompanying commentary.

9. Music – We know the transition from Barry Manilow to Celtic Punk has been problematic but rest assured, you’ll be humming Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced in the car before you know it. Despite the dominance of the airwaves by wimpy trousers like One Deflection and Taylor’s Wiffed (whoever they are), there is still a vast underground world of hard partying, mysoginistic, drug fuelled thrashers for your viewing and participatory pleasure. Accompanying Not Garfunkel’s next world tour should give you a taste of this enchanting world.

10. Retirement – Enjoy it. You’ve earned it.

Thus endeth my suicide note.

Flat Out in Holland

admin

I’ve just spent a few days in Holland. If John Denver was still around he’d hate the place. Searching for a Rocky Mountain High (the Rocky Mountain bit, not the high bit – that’s everywhere) here would be like looking for a massage with a happy ending at a Puritan League meeting. The only hills here are inverted – when you go down into a tunnel and come up and out the other side.

I got here on Finnair, which I’ve never used before. After decades of travel it’s unusual for me to experience a new (to me) airline despite the fact that new airlines are springing up all over the place all of the time. Perhaps that’s because you’d avoid most of the new budget outfits like the plague.

But Finnair was great. One disappointment, if you could call it that, was that the cabin crew in the part of the plane I was in were all Asian (bogus racism alert!!!!!!). We did leave from Singapore so maybe it was the local crew but I expected at least one or two cool blondes. But I’m not complaining. Pick an Asian airline, any one – Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Malaysian, Korean Air etc – and all of their people are guaranteed to know the difference between offering a service and being your servant. That can’t be said about certain Australian, US and British airlines, some of whose fussbudgets would prefer to throw that drink in your lap as serve it to you with a smile (which should always be reciprocated – free piece of advice there). But in this case it could certainly be said about Finnair.

We landed in Helsinki on the way to Amsterdam and I saw snow for the first time in years. I also wore a coat and a scarf when I got off the plane there and later in Amsterdam also for the first time in years. The first day in Holland was bitterly cold. The sort or cold where you could snap off an ear and not feel a thing. I was reminded of the last time the CB and I were in Europe in winter on vacation and vowed and declared never to do it again. This was business though so I guess it didn’t count. And it was November so not officially winter unless the EU has redefined the seasons in accordance with some transgender, marriage equality, climate change directive from the UN to spite the Brits because of Brexit. Or something.

Like another flat place we visited recently – Denmark – there seem to be more bicycles than cars, especially in and around the town centres. I was in Haarlem and there were bike lanes everywhere. For the uninitiated this is a real hazard and the bells don’t help because they can be ringing all around you or not at all as the case may be. When my colleagues and I ventured outside we were constantly hauling each other out of the way of whispering, wurring, scarf trailing missiles. It was like a practice run for the future world of electric cars. They’ll have to be fitted with diesel engines so we can hear them coming.

On my way home it was Finnair again to Helsinki then on to Hong Kong then Brisbane. I had been fortunate in that my contracted employer has stumped up for biz class so I settled into my cubicle, contemplating the glass of Perrier (champagne, not water) on my little side table and hoped the bunch of Australian women who were screeching and cackling on the other side of the cabin didn’t do something really embarrassing that reflected badly on me. My inner snob is emerging; I’m a very intolerant traveller. By all means get pissed, I do it all the time, but leave the bogan on the cruise you just got off or wherever it is you’ve been.

Shit, I didn’t think I had that level of nastiness in me. Must be because I am currently immersed in Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir. The old adage “the word is mightier than the sword” was written for him although he would have considered it trite and a cliché despite the fact that his word-sword and especially his spoken words were uncompromisingly and ruthlessly rapier sharp. He quotes William Safire as saying “clichés should be avoided like the plague”. Quite so. I use present tense in the previous sentence because it’s in his book and past tense in the sentence before that because tragically, he is no longer with us. But he is preserved forever in print and in the formaldehyde of YouTube.

You can’t complain about lie flat seats these days….but I’m going to. As I said previously, Finnair is great but, and this is really pushing it, you really need to lie on your right side because the space where your feet go sort of curves to the right. So if you lie on your left side you’re feet are against the curve and it’s like having your shoes on the wrong feet because the end bit is rather narrow. But this is Venezuelan President-for-life, Nicholas Maduro complaining that his steak is medium when it should be well-done so I shall shut up.

If anything of interest was going to happen between Helsinki and Brisbane, I would have let you know.

It didn’t.

 

Ringing in the Years

admin2 Comments

I’m not a complete tech dinosaur – I know enough to get by. But I do remember when the first electronic calculator appeared – still don’t know how that liquid crystal display works. And when I first worked in an open plan office at a mine, there was one phone for everybody. My first job in the commercial world was eased by the use of telex then faxes and if you were extremely lucky you had a computer terminal on your desk linked to a main frame computer in another building. And it spoke a language called Fortran or something. Some of us even remember that there were floppies before there were flashes. Fast forward to now and the smart phone era and it’s time to upgrade.

It was inevitable I guess. My iPhone was built during the Triassic period (see reference to dinosaurs above) and powered by cow dung and hamsters and needed gunpowder to take photos. On Wednesday the CB’s iPhone decided it was a two year old toddler so threw itself on the ground and refused to function under any circumstances. It did the equivalent of locking itself in the bathroom and flushing the key. So it was time to upgrade our communications capability from the 21st century equivalent of smoke signals to something akin to the pony express.

Off we went to the internet to try to find a plan less complex than the theory of relativity and locate phones that……make phone calls, gasp!! We decided on 21st century iPhone 6S’s. I know, I know. This is like buying a Zephyr 6 to replace a Model T Ford. Admirable in 1960 but hardly cutting edge in 20… (what year is it again?). Then it was off to the shopping mall to confront a bouncing, toothy 20 something in the Tech shop who knew everything about stuff and proceeded to explain all about zzzzzzz.

We eventually left after very patient, very polite Katie explained a whole lot of something or other to us which I suspect had nothing to do with making phone calls.

So to home. Much more important things were beckoning – the sun was over the yardarm and it was Friday afternoon. Then Prodigal Son spent an hour transferring my contacts and emails from my aforementioned steam driven device to the new one, because these things are so user friendly if you are Steve Jobs.

I can now do things that defy description. It can tell me my location which will be very useful when I don’t know where I am. It will tell me that I am, in fact, here. I can do a university course, learn a musical instrument – I stumbled on a piano keyboard but have no idea how to relocate it. It makes noises that a movie studio would be proud of although it doesn’t seem keen to let me use my old ring tone – Rocks Off by the Rolling Stones. I can watch movies because a 5 inch panorama is as good as it gets (if you’re an ant).

Whatever. Our phone numbers and email address are unchanged.

Skin in the Game

admin

There’s a lady in this world who has repeatedly saved my life. I’m not talking about my wife, my mother, my daughter or my granddaughter who are all a very large part of my world or various girlfriends (numbers 1, 2 and 3 in particular – christened thusly by the child bride in fact, and girlfriends of the purely platonic type I might add). I’m not talking about a religious icon or a sporting legend or a racehorse, none of whom/which have risen to sufficient heights of achievement to even raise my heart rate. To be fair though, if Monica Bellucci could play rugby, she’d be up there.

No, I’m talking about my dermatologist. I visited her again yesterday and left with a bloodied right leg, a bloodied left hand and a slightly bloody left arm. But first we have to backtrack a little. Actually, I wish it was a little but it’s actually a lot. I was born in the UK some decades back and it was immediately obvious that there is Viking in my ancestry – my red hair and fair complexion are dead (if you’ll pardon the expression) giveaways. Many years later this particular heritage also manifested itself via Dupuytren’s Contracture which is sometimes called Viking’s Disease amongst other things. Another lady specialist who fixed this up for me only saved my left hand from becoming a permanent heavy metal horns symbol and thereby preserving my (marginal) ability to play the guitar. But Mr Dupuytren’s another story. Back to my skin.

Leaving the UK to live in Australia when I was eight was a blessing in disguise (which my mother still hasn’t seen through) from every angle except for, in my case, the sun. Don’t get me wrong – I love the sun, not least for the fact that it keeps us alive and will continue to do so for another 4 billion years give or take unless the most recent 12 year time frame for irreversible climatic catastrophe and atmospheric mayhem predicted by the IPCC and supported by those doyens of atmospheric physics, left wing journalists and humanities students, comes to pass. All of the others haven’t so their odds of getting it right are increasing even if temperatures and sea levels aren’t moving other than by utterly normal fluctuations. The sun is only my enemy when I expose my extremely combustible skin to it which makes me sound rather vampirish. Thankfully that particular quirk of my genome hasn’t kicked in yet because I prefer sleeping at night rather than swooping on unsuspecting bare necked tottie.

As kids we weren’t aware of the long term effects of extended sun exposure so we grimaced through the sunburn, peeled off the dead skin, took our shirts off and did it all again. It’s not my fault if in neighbourhood football games I was always picked on the “skins” team and never the “shirts”. I still remember lying face down on a bed in my mother’s aunt’s ramshackle house in the then sleepy village of Byron Bay, with blisters all over my back and a plague of insects swarming through the house. The next day we had to tie my mother to a tree to stop her hitchhiking to Brisbane Airport to escape from this Stephen King nightmare and back to the civilisation of Timperley, Cheshire, England.

I survived however but just as the Soviets supposedly planted sleeper cells in the US during the cold war, I had my own sleeper cells which decades later have been waking up. And this is where my life-saver lady comes in. She wasn’t the first to stick a scalpel into me but certainly the most frequent over recent years. After my GP at the time tired of squirting liquid nitrogen at various blemishes on my person, he referred me to a specialist dermatologist who soon after went off to do research and gave me to an associate, the aforementioned lady. I have been to see her many times over many years and I never escape from her surgery unscathed. She is always scraping, digging or cutting, hence the reference to bloodied appendages, above. I’m a bleeder, what can I say.

Occasionally, if the cutting part is a bit tricky, she’ll send me to a plastic surgeon. Here was me thinking plastic surgeons were only there to straighten actress’s noses or make their tits bigger. But no. One did a job on me that required a degree in ear lobe origami. Another did a much more basic job on my back that left a 50mm scar. This and other rather smaller scars randomly scattered over my torso and appendages proved quite an attraction for one of the theatre nurses. The conversation went something like this:

Nurse – Another scar eh?

Me – Yeah, looks like it. Still it won’t be lonely.

Nurse – No but there’s nothing wrong with a few scars.

Me – Come again?

Nurse – Yeah, scars are sexy. Girls like a few scars on a bloke.

Me – Doctor, can we get moving here.

The point is, had those sleeper cells been allowed to wake up, scratch their balls, have a few beers and generally hung out, they would have eventually morphed into something infinitely uglier and much more dangerous. So the trick is to eliminate the cancerous bastards before they even know their short life’s objective which it to make my life shorter. And my guardian angel has been doing just that for years now. Had I adopted the same attitude as a number of people I’ve known or known about who couldn’t really have cared less until it was too late, I’d be a footnote in history.

The good news is that after reaching peak extraction a few years ago, we’re now down to the residuals. Anything that looks ever so slightly suspicious is ruthlessly dispatched to the pathology lab minus its previous mode of transport i.e. me. Three monthly checkups inevitably resulted in surgical follow-up. But eventually three months became six and yesterday I was told we are almost at the twelve month stage. She’s a lovely young lady to whom I literally owe my life and while I would like to think there will come a time when I don’t have to see her again, there won’t.