From space, the 100 kilometre road from Orchhra where our train is parked, to Gwalia would look like any respectable highway. Four lanes of bitumen and a well-tended median strip down the middle. Now we’re not talking about the drivers here – they are a constant all over the country. We are talking about the actual road. It seems to me that to make a bitumen road, you put down the base, put the hot bitumen on the base then roll it flat and smooth. This has been achieved successfully all over the world. Except here. This feels like driving on a cobbled road in a vehicle with concrete suspension, except the cobbles haven’t flattened and smoothed with age. They are bricks that were liberally and randomly strewn around last week with edges exposed. Passenger joints have been loosened to the extent that limbs litter the buses aisle. It’s taken about an hour to write this paragraph – line up the “t”, hit the “h”. And vehicles are charged a toll to use this road. Maybe it’s to raise money to put that top layer of bitumen down.
There’s a very impressive palace in Orchhra that was built by Shah Jahan’s (of Taj Mahal fame) father. He built it especially to welcome one of his regal mates in the area. It took 22 years to build. That’s a long time to wait to go and see a friend for a barbecue and a beer.
In #5 of this series I mentioned that to get a decent night’s sleep on this train, I’d have to drink more. This was proven without a shadow of doubt on our last night on the train. One of the great aspects of travelling with groups of people is that occasionally you meet up with kindred spirits and a great time is had by all. So it has been on this trip. The four of us gave it a nudge last night and I slept like a baby. I woke up a bit fuzzy about four minutes before the alarm was due to go off (don’t you hate that) but it was a night where rattling wheels, swaying carriages and piercing horns were shoved firmly into the background. It was also a night when we were all gifted Indian garb – saris for the women and long collarless shirt type things for the men. There was an expectation that we would all dance, Indian style. The women did but in keeping with the ancient adage that men over 40 should never dance, we didn’t.
And that’s pretty much that for the Indian leg of this expedition, unless I think of something else. Sri Lanka will begin just as soon as I see something that you need to know about.
In Agra we were subjected to another bout of economic tourism. It’s to be expected and is perfectly understandable – milk the foreigners like Old Macdonald’s cow. Incidentally the various monuments are in on this as well. Entry signs say 50 rupees for Indians, 750 rupees for foreigners. You can’t get more obvious than that. Agra is all about the Taj Mahal so local artisans make various tables and othe items requiring flat surfaces and inlay them with semi-precious stones fashioned into shapes like flowers and….other flowers. If nothing catches your fancy here, the swarm of salesmen, one of whom is always at your elbow, will usher you into the next room which has similar stuff only smaller, like drink coasters. The next room, but wait there’s more, has wooden carvings and metal things and wall hangings. The next room is souvenirs where the CB bought a fridge magnet – our contribution to the local economy. After negotiating what seemed like the local version of Ikea we felt we had to buy something just to escape.
Moving on to Varanasi then Khajuraho, we see a life and death comparison or more accurately death and life respectively. Varanasi is dominated by death with two cremation areas on the Ganges in a 7 kilometre stretch of 84 ghats or step areas down to the river from the higher up town streets. Each crematorium can handle 40-50 bodies at a time without mingling grandad with the widow on the adjacent pyre. There is an element of “life” in the process I guess, because most of the ghat area is for people to cleanse and rejuvenate themselves in the river. Judging by what we saw in the river, this would be a short cut to crematorium 1 or 2 for people like us without the immune system of a mechanical bull.
Khajuraho on the other hand, is an overflowing font of life which has manifested in every newly wed’s (okay, in the 1950’s) favourite book – the Karma Sutra. They were randy buggers back in the 12th century, getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, all carved into temple walls in more loving detail than your average Pornhub video. We won’t go into what soldiers and their horses got up to when in the field with no (human) female company to speak of. Suffice to say, carving a surprised look on a horse’s face must have taken a lot of skill.
To emphasise the extent to which pleasures of the flesh dominated procedings in Dark Ages India, there were originally 84 temples in this area of which 25 remain. That’s a lot of dirty pictures and an absolute boon for the illiterates (and everyone else) although it would.d be rather difficult to hide a hindu temple under your mattress. However wild your imagination the good burghers of Khajuraho had it covered, bearing in mind they had no electricity for more elaborate kinks. There were either a small number of energiser bunny artisans, carving day and night for years or a very large number of equally talented sculptors dedicated to their art (and various proclivities). It must have been on for young and old on Saturday nights in Khajuraho.
You’ve heard of the caste system right? It’s a bit like a family hierarchy with Dad at the top (where’s that laughter coming from) and the pet budgerigar at the bottom. Indian society is similarly structured with Brahmins (spell check tried to change that to Bradman which I guess makes sense for cricket fans of which there are a few in India) at the top and Untouchables at the bottom. These Untouchables aren’t FBI agents although Melania Trump may have felt they were bottom feeders when American FBI agents were rummaging through her knicker drawer during a Mar a Largo raid a couple of years ago. No, they are societies forgotten people. But they apparently have their own king and you can see his big yellow house on the west bank of the Ganges in Varanasi – who knew? I don’t think his name’s Fagin, but I get a very Oliver Twist taste from this.
If I’m to get a decent night’s sleep on this train, I’m going to have to drink a lot more. I swear, last night we went cross-country and there were pot-holes aplenty. Trains aren’t supposed to do that. They are supposed to glide smoothly on two polished ribbons of steel. Walking back to our room involves pinballing down narrow corridors and I think i’ve done a hammy. Don’t get me wrong, the staff are great as is the service, the food is superb, the drinks are eminently reasonable and the presentation is immaculate, but this train has square wheels. The shinkansen it aint.
We’ve just been to the Taj Mahal. As with all ancient or at least centuries old wonders of the world, the numbers associated with it are mind-blowing. It took 20000 workers 22 years, from 1631 to 1653 to build it (admittedly short by European cathedral standards) in honour of a woman who bore 14 kids in 18 years, a tradition which families in this country have striven to uphold ever since. After a marathon like that the poor lady expired from over exertion but she has a magnificent monument to her efforts which one or two catholics might be a tad jealous of.
Actually, regarding the time it took to build this thing, if the heat is anything to go by, it’s not at all surprising. It’s all we can do to drag our feet around unencumbered let alone carrying a big block of marble. But if the Taj had been built in Norway, it’d have been finished in about three weeks. Have I mentioned how hot it’s been. It’s been, should I visit one of the wonders of the world or stay in the train’s airconditioned bar, hot. It’s been Monica Bellucci hot. And I got a cold. How did that happen and how mesmerisingly ironic. Bloody climate change….or something. Actually that’s been mentioned a few times by the guides and as there are only 18 of us (excluding staff) on this train, rather that alienate the climateers I’ve kept schtum. Notwithstanding climate debates and entirely due to the heat, I’m currently surviving on muscle memory and sense of smell.
Further on health matters, we’ve been in India for well over a week and the inevitable is yet to happen for me. In a perverse way I was sort of looking forward to it because my hat’s a bit tight and when the trapdoor opens you can usually be guaranteed to drop a couple of hat sizes. But Delhi belly will be lurking I have no doubt so the wait is like what the redcoats had to endure at Rorke’s Drift. Only a matter of time before the Zulus explode into view with debilitating mayhem on their agenda. Actually, the wait’s not quite that bad.
One thing I have noticed, or haven’t to be more precise, is the complete absence of the once ubiquitous Ambassador car. When I first started coming to India in the late 1980’s, they were pretty much the only cars on the road. Now, in your typical city commute, you are totally hemmed in by Korean and Japanese cars and the same trucks and buses – they haven’t gone anywhere. But where could the Ambassadors have gone? The things were damn near indestructible. I was in an accident in one many years ago. Today the front of the car would have needed considerable TLC from your favourite panel beater. Our Ambassador back then – not a mark. The inside of the car was chaotic with papers and bags (and people) strewn about but the outside was business as usual.
Many years ago I spent some time walking the various government ministries trying to get a number of projects underway. One of the most comical scenes I saw was when convoys of Ambassadors left a ministerial building, like a stream of Noddy cars, conveying a minister somewhere. Amidst all the flashing lights and sirens there were security people hanging out of windows waving their arms to get traffic out of the way. Good luck with that.
We’re now on our way to see some of India’s and the world’s great sites via train. Apparently one of them isn’t the Ranthambore safari park but back to that later. We’re on the Deccan Odyssey and it’s not a bad way to travel especially when you have your own double bed and your own bathroom which is bigger than the hotel bathroom we had last time we stayed in London. In that one you could take a dump and have a shower at the same time – in the conventional ways and not the way you’re thinking.
We are so spoilt it got me thinking about Graham Nash on the Marrakesh Express (the music is never far away). There wasn’t any wifi back then in the 60’s, no newspapers for days and I can’t imagine being able to get Netflix on Moroccan TV. So when we get the shits because a football score back home in Australia isn’t immediately available, we need to pause and just for a change, watch the world around us drift by. So I’ll be looking at the world through the sunset in your eyes and smelling the garden in your hair, my love.
Back to the Ranthambore safari park. Apparently it contains between 75 and 80 tigers. We saw exactly none of them. This was slightly more disappointing than our Nepal tiger safari where we saw zero tigers but did see tiger footprints and tiger crap, according to our guide. I’m coming to the view that there are actually no tigers in the wild. They are all in zoos. Add to that, our vehicle had cement wheels and my arse can’t take much more of this luxury. Bouncing around in that vehicle did have one upside however. It doubled my steps for the day and I’m claiming them simply because of the energy expended in trying not to be thrown out of the vehicle.
Having done a few cruises we are in a position to make comparisons. So this is like a cruise on land. We are on a land cruiser, if you like. Sorry Toyota but this is the real deal. We stop in a place with something worth seeing, stagger round in 40 degree heat then retreat to the airconditioned bar immediately on returning to the train/ship.
When it comes to economic tourism the CB and I have been stung five times. Okay, we’re not talking trinkets and baubles here or in my case t-shirts with I Heart Jaipur on them. We’re talking serious stuff for serious money – glass in Murano and linen in Burano (or maybe the other way round) near Venice and carpets in Turkey, Nepal and Jordan. This is entirely voluntary of course. You’re not being tricked into spending big bucks on a carpet when you’ve been negotiating for the best part of an hour. But we managed to resist in Jaipur. A silk bed duvet for $260 was a heart-beat away from confirmation until we pulled back from the brink. That’s an extra $260 to put over the bar in my world so we are way in front and additionally don’t have a pile of material to cart all over the subcontinent. Yesterday we were also taken to an establishment ostensibly to marvel at the intricate skills of gentlemen grinding and faceting precious stones into jewellery. Then, as an afterthought, how about we buy something? A skilled and persistent salesman almost had a turquoise necklace round the CB’s neck but we triumphed again.
My name is Chris and I put sugar in my coffee this morning. I felt like an alcoholic sneaking a surreptitious vodka. Not putting sugar in coffee has been vindicated by Bobby Kennedy’s appointment as Health Secretary in the Trump administration and his relentless pursuit of processed foods. But the coffee here is bitter and I weakened.
The Indian railway system is one of the wonders of the modernish world. When there are no highways to speak of and plane tickets are prohibitively expensive for your average village dweller, the train is the answer although the authorities are starting to clamp down. A prominent sign at Jaipur station advised potential passengers not to travel on the roof of the train. Electrification would render this sign somewhat redundant generally. But if you’ve spent your life with the wind in your hair, a few wires will help prevent you falling off, right. Notwithstanding the wonder of it all, the system is not conducive to a leisurely chuff chuff through the countryside. It seems like our train has to wait for an access slot then it’s hell-for-leather to the next waiting spot, then an hour later, repeat. And when this thing hits top-speed it feels like a Cessna in a hurricane. It’s all you can do to stop being flung against a wall as Casey Jones slams another shovel of coal into the boiler and hits the accelerator.
I have stood fuming, behind people in immigration queues in India who appear to be trying to negotiate their way into the country. I get most impatient in check-in lines at the airport and in immigration lines. How hard can it be, I’m saying to myself. Have a valid passport, get a visa, fill in the immigration form, you’re in. Now it’s e-visas and we became that person who’s holding up the queue a few days back. We had our e-visas and all of the other required documentation so what could possibly go wrong. Something induced chagrin in our immigration officer but we still have no idea what. So after handing over passport, boarding pass, e-visa print-out and customs form, he did this :
1. Takes the paperwork and stares at it like it was a ransom note. 2. Consults his colleague in the next booth who shrugs – a problem shared is two problems so he’s not interested. 3. Gets up and walks off. Not a good sign. Fortunately he didn’t return with an officious looking gentleman in uniform, just a worried look. 4. Re-takes his seat and continues tapping his computer and shuffling paper. 5. Stamps passport – a good sign but then… 6. Continues to scratch his head and stare intently at the computer screen and the paperwork yet again. 7. Hands everything back without having said a word or even looking at me during the whole process. I say “thank you sir”, step into India and hope I don’t have to step back into non-nationality limbo (remember, we’ve left Australia) to rescue the Child Bride.. 8. Repeats with CB’s paperwork.
At least we didn’t have to wait for our luggage to appear. After this rigmarole it was rotating on the carousel when we got there.
So Trump’s new tariff regime has been announced. I think our hotel here in Delhi must think we’re Americans because our bar bill last night had 4 taxes attached. S.C. was 8%, CGST was 9%, SGST was 9% and DVAT was 25%. I don’t know what any of those are apart from variations on consumption taxes but it increased the bill by about 30% which, apart from being rather excessive, doesn’t appear to make mathematical sense until you realise that the two 9%’s were 9% of the 8%. So the original bill of 6050 rupees became 8133.62. Our government, with only a 10% GST are obviously rank amateurs, especially at milking foreigners.
My first visit to India was 1986 and I haven’t been back since 2013 so it’s changed a bit. The bit we have seen so far in Delhi including the airport, has changed in some fairly fundamental ways especially with their Metro rail system. The place has evolved from the East India Company to the Jetsons. Indians have always been pretty tech savvy – look who runs or at least drives a big chunk of Silicon Valley. But whilst your average Indian can code a moon launch, ask them to drive between two white lines and see how far you get. Those lines represent wasted paint; nothing more, nothing less. How else do you convert three lanes into five if you can’t ignore those pesky lines.
As Geoffrey Chaucer sagely observed in 1395, “time and tide wait for no man”, and neither does Indian traffic. As I remember, the traffic rules aren’t. They’re just for guidance and once you get past vaguely sticking to the jeft side of the road, you ‘re on your own. I couldn’t help notice the dual speed limits – 70km/hr for cars and 40km/hr for trucks….on the same road. Now there’s a recipe for disaster. Not quite as bad as the urban myth about Sweden switching from driving on the left side of the road to the right in 1967 – cars this weekend, trucks and buses next weekend. If you’ve seen pictures of the traffic on the actual fateful day you’ll notice vehicles being hit from all directions. It’s why Volvos are so boxy. What did really cause a small problem in Sweden was that the buses all had doors on the left side so stepping off said bus into traffic mayhem was somewhat problematic I would think.
Man, Singapore has changed over the decades I’ve been visiting and you especially notice if you haven’t been for a while. It now epitomises what can only be described as architectural porn. If Lily Philips and Bonnie Blue were buildings, they’d be here. Men would be queuing up at their various entrances to come inside. These days the newer buildings especially, are extravagant and extroverted and for a modest fee you can go all of the way… to the top. At this point (because i just deleted a whole lot of R18+ material) I’m reminded of that famous joke – a beautiful woman walks into a bar and asks the barman for a double entendre, so he gives her one. And I can hear Led Zeppelin singing songs from In Through The Out Door. That’s enough; time to move on.
Do you know how hard it is to drive in Singapore? Okay, it’s not that the traffic is like it is in Boston (scroll down a few pages to find out) but it’s really hard to be able to drive in Singapore. The government wants to keep the traffic moving and the fewer cars there are on the road, the more room there is for the buses. As I have said before, if you close your eyes and step into the road in Hong Kong you’ll get hit by a taxi or a Rolls Royce (okay, maybe not as probable now as 25 years ago). In Singapore you’ll be hit by a single decker or double decker bus. Only a certain number of cars are licensed at any one time so when a slot becomes available, it’s auctioned. So how did that guy driving the clapped out Honda Civic afford the 90 grand for a certificate to drive before even buying his car. Oh…that does explain it.
When you visit Singapore, Raffles Hotel is a venue for tourist pilgrimage. Not so much the hotel itself, where dressing for dinner requires a cream linen jacket, jodhpurs, spurs and pith helmet, but the Long Bar which much to the chagrin of visiting colonels, accommodates shorts, t-shirts and thongs (of the foot variety). But you are made to pay for these indiscretions because the management knows you are only there to sample the famous Singapore Sling so one for me and one for the child bride plus GST plus service charge sets you back cents short of a ton. And that’s Singapore dollars which used to be worth somewhat less than the Aussie and are now worth 20% more. Thanks Albo. The only compensation (and reasonably priced nourishment ie free) was peanuts still in the shell. On relieving the nut of its outer layer, said layer is discarded on to the floor – tradition, old boy.
On our way back from Raffles to our lodgings, we happened upon a bar/restaurant that looked suitable for our custom. It was serving Taiwanese cuisine which is a bit too Cantonese for my liking but the menu looked okay so we went in. After dozens of trips to Taiwan you can get used to anything. A pint of Heineken for me and a stubby of Tiger for the CB and we were set. It was a good sized establishment but there was no one else in there, only us. The bar down the street was packed. Was there an imminent Chinese strike on the cards which we hadn’t been told about? There wasn’t. You would have heard about it.
And now, in the immortal words of Monty Python, for something completely different. The worst thing that can happen to you on the road is to have your credit card stopped by your bank. It happened to us yesterday. This has happened to me a few times in my travels. For example, a night out with my marketing team in London many years ago, in a less than salubrious establishment, resulted in a frantic phone call from the CB at some ungodly hour when I was still barely capable of lying down without falling over. The supermarket had rejected her card and apparently our bank was a little miffed. So this afternoon a couple of texts from the bank set off alarm bells. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my fault this time but what??? This is Singapore and everyone is scrupulously honest, right. It turns out, a card which I thought had expired years ago and been replaced, was still active and someone was using it. Apparently I am now a member of the National Gallery of Victoria. WTFingF. After being on hold for 15 minutes on an International call, it was eventually sorted
What is it with us and bars? If you’ve read about our recent trek through north-east America and Canada, you’ll know that not everyone takes these things anywhere near as seriously as I do. We’re talking Vince Lombardi’s seriousness about winning serious. So we’re in a perfectly respectable hotel in Singapore with a perfectly adequate lobby bar. Call me old fashioned but one thing expected of bars, especially with happy hour draining away, is that there will be someone behind the bar to do what people behind bars normally do for people in front of bars. So for two consecutive nights I’ve had to go to the front desk and politely ask, on behalf of us and other patrons, the whereabouts of the barman. Each time they’ve tracked him down long enough to pour a couple of drinks then promptly f.. off again. There’s a much better party going on somewhere else obviously. And while we’re on this topic, we just got on our flight for which we have lashed out to sit up the front and they are serving Singapore Slings. For nothing. More champagne, my dear. That can either be a question addressed to the child bride or a statement addressed to the flight attendant.
I used to have a love-hate relationship with India – I hated going and I loved leaving. But after 80 or so visits, with 1993 being the peak with nine, and about a year of my life spent there all up, I think I’m finally getting the hang of the place.
After a life snuggled up in the bosom of Western civilisation, my first experience of Madras as it was then called, was queuing up on the airport tarmac, patiently waiting for my turn at the single immigration desk. The door out of customs emptied us into the car-park where I was immediately identified by my then agent and now great friend who whisked me through the dark but crowded and noisy streets to a Taj hotel where I was introduced to something the Indians excel at – hotel bars. If you like subdued lighting, wood panelling and leather chairs, join the club. I always felt like I needed to be wearing a tux and smoking a cigar when sitting in one of these places, ordering my dry Martini, shaken not stirred. They are about as far away from the ubiquitous slums as it is possible to get.
But back to trip number one. I had decided that the food was going to kill me so during the ten or so days I was there, I subsisted on fried chicken, toast and beer, apart from the last meal. The last stop before going to the airport to leave was a revolving rooftop Chinese restaurant in Bombay, as it was then called. The Asian gentleman throwing up into a bathroom sink should have given a clue so by the time I reached Singapore, my body was the equivalent of a supermarket shopping trolley – it just wasn’t cooperating with my brain so all the way back to Brisbane I sat motionless staring straight ahead. If I moved my eyes above or below the horizontal I experienced what it must feel like riding a tumble dryer – rather odd actually. Mind over matter got me out of that plane and I have only ever once since felt worse, courtesy of a dodgy prawn in Seoul. That’s a story for another day. Incidentally I am now a slavish devotee of Indian food and have graduated to putting hot chillies in green salads. So I love hot food but will admit to being beaten by it twice; once in Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and once in Singleton in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. That night I had to saw the top of my head off to let the fire out and I swear my teeth and hair were sweating.
A friend once told me that you can tell how “civilised” a place is if you fly in at night and look down at the lights. If the streets and houses are arranged in reasonably predictable rows, you’re coming into a place with some semblance at least, of planning. If the lights appear to have spread like mold with just the occasional waving ribbon of flickering light, like a vein in cheese, you’re in for an interesting time. Not criticising here. Just saying. The culture shock comes in many guises. There’re the wash-your-eyes-out-with-bleach moments which I won’t go into right now (think of the children) and there are moments of incredulity like a hotel breakfast for three for the equivalent of $6. Admittedly that was before the ravages of 1990’s and more recent inflation, but seriously… I’m still expecting to be shirt-fronted by something entirely unexpected but the more mundane, like a man on an elephant patiently waiting for the traffic lights to change will be contemplated with a stifled yawn.
We won’t be restricting ourselves to India on this trip. Why fly over places when you can stop over. This doesn’t apply to the USA of course where the snobs living on the East Coast or the Left coast consider the rest of the place to be redneck flyover country. We don’t consider Singapore to be even a little bit redneck so will be stopping there to look at all of that glass. We wanted to go to the Maldives also so Sri Lanka gets a guernsey. And joy of joys, it’s not international cricket season although Australia has beaten both India and Sri Lanka recently so I would have bragging rights. I still expect cricket to come up in conversation but only every time we speak to the locals.
I bought tickets for Guns N’ Roses for myself, son, daughter and son-in-law on February 10th 2021. We finally got to use them last night, November 22nd 2022, after a covid inspired year-long delay. And I’m pleased to say there wasn’t a mask in sight. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any of course, because the concert was at the local football stadium so it was somewhat difficult to tell whether the amorphous mass on the other side of the field actually comprised people, let alone people with bandannas on their faces.
Congratulations Brisbane! The Gunners managed to get more people into the stadium than most of our sporting teams although, to be fair, you can’t actually take a chair out into the middle of the field during a game. I’ve had enough of sitting (or mostly standing) in front of the stage so we go for seats on the side, looking down on the stage from a 30-45 degree angle. The promoters don’t miss you when it comes to the cost of these seats and I paid top dollar to be able to see not much on the stage to be honest. But the big screens either side of the stage were BIG so my initial reluctance to go to a stadium concert (this was my first) and my disquiet when I saw how far away we were (despite, as I may have just mentioned, the price of the tickets) was assuaged when the gig got underway and the visual and sound and fury hit us full-on.
I just read a review of the concert and the reviewer made the point that there aren’t many stadium fillers in the music world these days including the Gunners – there were a lot of empty seats. If you’d asked my opinion on this when the music started I’d have agreed but a couple of songs in, when the lights scanned the arena it was clear that many people in the stadium bars were not throwing that last beer down for anyone. Twenty minutes in, the only areas not filled were those behind light towers and other impediments. So the reviewer obviously didn’t turn round after the first few songs. And I can tell you this for nothing, this little black duck won’t be attending concerts by those remaining few noted stadium fillers like Cold Play and Ed Sheeran.
Actually the people who finished their beers rather than catch the first couple of songs did themselves a favour because it took that long for Axl to get his mojo. Initially he looked and sounded like me doing “It’s So Easy” in a Ginza karaoke bar. By the time we got to “Welcome to the Jungle” he was sweating and snarling and looking mildly deranged and it was game-on. Speaking of how he looked, minus the bandanna, long hair and beard I couldn’t decide whether he was morphing into Kiefer Sutherland, impersonating Shane Warne or auditioning for Derek Jakobi’s “I Claudius” (you have to be able to remember back to 1976/77 for that one).
Axl’s always had a reputation for being somewhat unreliable. The sound curfew may have had something to do with them kicking off a 7.00pm scheduled start at a respectable 7.10pm but he also seemed to be making an extra effort to stay onside (that’s two football references in one sentence) by having Aussie badges sewn into the parts of his jeans that weren’t holes. And he must have spent the afternoon in a souvenir shop because he changed his t-shirt about eight times and each one had something antipodean on it except the one that said “Satan is a Lesbian”. Alright!
Much as the sound i.e. the actual music, is vital to the whole, if the singer isn’t on song, so to speak, the performance lacks something. The concert went for bang-on three hours and the time flew by, I have to admit. But it could have been shortened and improved (IMHO) by cutting a few songs that Axl struggled with. His once incredible range came out to play occasionally but sometimes he seemed uncertain as to whether to bang it up an octave to banshee or remain in the safe baritone range. Sometimes that decision was taken mid-sentence and occasionally mid-word. But let’s not quibble – to churn out that volume for that long is seriously impressive.
The musicians and musicianship were as you would expect. Duff’s base is still making my organs vibrate and did anyone ever tell him he looks like a dishevelled David Bowie. They have a Ronnie Wood lookalike guitarist (while we’re doing appearance comparisons) called Richard Fortus and there’s not much of him which is emphasised by his playing a huge Gretsch White Falcon guitar. And he can really play it. They let him off the leash a few times and his lead work was very good even if the weight of the guitar seemed to be dragging him closer and closer to the floor. But no matter how good he is, he or anyone for that matter, playing in a band that has Slash in it, will always be the rhythm guitarist. The songs are always the stars of these shows but Slash’s playing was not far behind. We got the full range from finger picking acoustic to rip-roaring, fire-breathing electric 12 string on a twin necked Gibson and everything in between.
There were three other musicians who were stuck up the back – the drummer and two keyboardists – who rarely figured on the big screen. One of them is a rather attractive young blonde lady who we saw about three times on the big screen and not at all on the stage because there was a light tower right in front of her from where we were sitting. My unmarried son was most disappointed.
And here’s the set list:
It’s So Easy Mr. Brownstone Chinese Democracy Slither (Velvet Revolver cover) Welcome to the Jungle (Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ intro) Reckless Life Double Talkin’ Jive Live and Let Die (Wings cover) Shadow of Your Love Estranged Rocket Queen You’re Crazy You Could Be Mine I Wanna Be Your Dog (The Stooges cover) (Duff on lead vocals) Absurd Hard Skool Better Civil War (Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” outro) Sorry (followed by band introductions) Slash Guitar Solo Sweet Child o’ Mine November Rain Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb cover) Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan cover) Nightrain Encore: Coma Patience (The Beatles’ “Blackbird” intro) Don’t Cry Paradise City
I know, I know. Witchita Lineman?? I guess if they can have a Paul McCartney song they can have a Glen Campbell song.
It’s been a while and apart from the last few weeks, not much has been happening. The last few weeks however involved helping to organise a mass visit of colleagues including the MD and CEO, from various corners of the globe to Brisbane for meetings then a series of mine and port visits. If you can imagine what planning and implementing a cross between a royal wedding and D-Day is like, that was it. Herding cats doesn’t even come close.
Airport transfers and meetings on the first two days went swimmingly. But just so you know how seriously I take these things, I MC’d the MD’s dinner on day 1 when he hosted a bunch of dignitaries and …ugh…coal suppliers. My commentary commenced as follows:
“Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen” (obviously not a government function or this would have been “birthing people and scum”).
“Thankyou, I wish my children were as obedient.”
“Thankyou for coming. I am hosting tonight. My name is Chris and I’m the Australian representative for the company. My pronouns are “golf’ and “beer”. I have another but choose not to bring it out in polite company”
And so it went.
Then on the first day of mine visits it all went to shit, starting with my airline ticket which had been cancelled by the booking agent and I found out an hour before the flight. I had 13 people, most of whom had never been to Australia before, in two groups heading in two different directions and for a while it looked like half of them (my half) would be on their own. The other group were on their own anyway as I am only able to be in one place at a time, much to the child bride’s chagrin.
Fortunately I was able to secure one of the few remaining seats on the Hi-Viz Express with my group and the fly-in fly-out or FIFO or fit-in or fuck-off (an intolerant bigot would say) mine workers. On landing in Emerald it took more than an hour, for various unfathomable reasons, to check-out two hire cars. We could have bought them quicker. And now I have to sort out the mess as both cars have been invoiced twice. While all this was going on the other group missed the guide I had organised for them in Gladstone so confusion reigned. A long first day became even longer – a 4.30am start to get the flight, two mine visits and about 4 hours of driving. No wonder Dysart thought the zombie apocalypse had descended upon them when we arrived that evening.
As I’m writing this, I’m also writing my weekly report for the above-mentioned people. Who said white, heterosexual cis-gendered, privileged, middle-class sperm donors can’t double task. And I’ve just inserted a link to the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in my weekly report. This is also the somewhat tenuous link between the mine visits and said weekly report.
Firstly, why is a Stones song in my weekly discussion on the status of the coal and iron ore industries in Australia? It’s because I insert songs and cartoons and occasional pithy comments to make these reports more interesting to the disinterested reader. While not detracting from the legitimate stuff I put in there, the various non-sequiturs do give the reader more incentive to open the report if only to check out the cartoon on page one. Here is one of my favourites from a couple of years back:
I worked at a copper mine for a few years about 15 years ago and got into this habit there – one report for the board and one for the staff. The last one I did for the staff explained the copper and gold prices using a Pink Floyd theme. I was particularly proud of that one.
But back to the Rolling Stones connection. I had two young tech savvy Indians in my vehicle and it took them about two days to work out how to pair their phones with the sound system in the car. It took old tech dinosaur me about ten minutes. So I had a couple of relaxing days of the Rolling Stones (there’s the connection, if you missed it), Led Zeppelin and the Pogues before being assaulted by a musical genre which, to be fair, I was very familiar with. I have spent more than a year of my life in India thanks to numerous (around 80, last count) business trips so am quite familiar with Indian cultural proclivities. I have also seen their movie. I know they make hundreds every year but it’s basically the same one with a few minor variations on the same theme – hero rescues heroine from moustache twirling villain while being assisted by numerous chest shaking, pelvis thrusting dancers. Their movies are like AC DC records. So I spent the last few days being subjected to a never-ending procession of Indian hotel elevator music.
Having almost missed my flight at the start of the trip, it was only fair that I almost missed it at the end. Having to return to our starting point because the hire car company wouldn’t allow an A to B hire, only an A to A, we were faced with a four and a half hour drive back to A after a port visit in the morning and retrieval of a left bag at our hotel which required a one hour diversion.
I was struck by how relaxed the usually officious security people at the airport were when faced with the bottle opener and spray can in my check-in bag which wasn’t being checked in because check-in was closed when I arrived at the airport half an hour before my flight. I guess they realised it would be taken off me at the foot of the plane’s stairs and put in the hold. Either that or imagining hijacking a plane with a bottle opener and deodorant was a bridge to far for even these people. Dear reader, you should try this because it guarantees your bag will be first off the plane. Not good for the blood pressure however.
The actual motivation for writing this was that the CB and I will be off on our travels again soon but I got side-tracked, as usual. But now that borders are open despite covid still being rampant throughout the world we are free. Fortunately politicians can’t think of any other ways to squeeze political advantage out of it so have lost interest. We’re off to Nepal so expect a series of Himalaya Hike stories. Actually it won’t be a hike. The CB doesn’t do camping or tents or hikes unless it involves one of these:
Good luck to you if you have managed to escape the what are now proving to be useless restrictions placed on us by our public servants. The CB and I are about to get our fourth dose of a vaccine that was once guaranteed to prevent us from catching covid (remember “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”). And we’ll have to wear a mask that’s now only good for robbing banks when we get the vaccine. And we’ll have to stand 1.5 metres away from the surgery receptionist before we get on a plane with a couple of hundred other people.
This covid thing will be right up there with the Y2K bug, catastrophic man-made climate change and rap “music” as the biggest frauds perpetrated on the human race in the last hundred years, IMHO.
I just watched a trailer for the new Ricky Gervais stand-up special on Netflix. Netflix, the wokest outfit on the planet and Ricky Gervais. If they thought Dave Chappelle was pushing boundaries, were they asleep when they let Ricky loose? And Bill Burr. And Tom Segura. And Joe Rogan – yes he does offensive stand-up as well. It’s possible Netflix were just pretending to be woke with their offensive kids programs that nobody watches and their Megan Markle whatevers that don’t seem to be getting made, let alone seen, while letting their stable of comedians rip. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the cry-babies on their staff to leave. Maybe they were hoping for a job at Twitter but Elon’s thrown a spanner in those particular (renewable electricity powered) works.
But back to Ricky. The trailer is all about the scarcity of funny female stand-ups. There are plenty of them, even on Netflix, but their ability to make you laugh varies. I guess it depends on your taste. There’s Nikki Glazer who talks about her vagina and blow-jobs, there’s Ali Wong who talks about her vagina and anal, there’s Christina P who talks about her vagina and childbirth. See, a veritable plethora of vag…. sorry, variety. Oh and there’s Ilisa Shlesinger who, as best I can make out is impersonating a spider. And there’s Taylor Tomlinson with the girl-next-door looks who likes to talk about sex, presumably to piss off her ultra-religious family. There appears to be a pattern emerging here, apart from the spider. Did you notice?
Having said that, I actually like (and laugh at) the above-mentioned female comedians (remember when they were comediennes). Maybe its the attractive females talking dirty thing. Most red-blooded heterosexual males (certainly the ones I know) are okay with this. And they do make me titter (sorry, couldn’t help it).
It’s now a couple of days later and I’ve watched SuperNature (that’s the new Ricky Gervais special) all the way through. Now Ricky’s got a reputation for causing offence, mostly unjustified in my humble opinion (actually, that should be by my standards) but there are some people who insist on being offended no matter what. Unfortunately we seem to have here, in this special, a situation where instead of the comedy causing offence, the offence is meant to make you laugh. It’s a subtle nuance I know, like punching a disabled baby, but think about it or better still watch the show. But of all the funniest people (see, I included women) on the planet, he is still one of the funniest, try-hard offending notwithstanding.
Ricky also seems to be on a one-man crusade to elevate the word “cunt” to “fuck” status. “Fuck” is in the process of vacating its position as the second most offensive word in the English language through continuous usage (by almost everyone except my mother), and now challenges “shit” as an almost acceptable word in polite society. It’ll be a “bloody” or a “bugger” before we know it.
One more thing Rick. Lose “right”. Saying “right” three times in every sentence makes you sound like a young female (I’m being a traditionalist here – call me old fashioned). I may have mentioned this previously but if the word “like” was excised from the English language millions of young women and girls all over the world would be struck dumb.. If you had not said the completely extraneous “right” so often your 1 hour 4 minutes performance would have been over in 45 minutes.
I gave this piece the title “Funny Girls” after writing the first three paragraphs. For those younger readers with a, like, recent education and therefore not well versed in English grammar (or anything else for that matter), the first three paragraphs are the chunks of words above the third line space, right. After getting to this point I thought I should probably change it. But then I realized that the dominant theme in SuperNature, or at least the one most people are talking about is “trans” and, having thought about the title some more, it somehow fits.
