Red Wine Express

So that was Ireland – pubs, greenery, spectacular scenery and a propensity to exaggerate – on the drive over from Limerick to Dublin this morning there was a brown (tourist) sign pointing to “Barack Obama’s Ancestral Home”. Someone should tell the tourist board there’s no apostrophe after the “O” in Obama. And the old 6 degrees of separation lark is hardly a claim to fame.

Copenhagen is flat and expensive which is a bit disappointing. You’d think there’d be room for some compensation in the prices to make-up for the absence of relief. Luckily what they lose in hills they gain in water. And it’s no wonder prices are high if salaries are amongst the highest in the world which they brag about. Basic economics really. And taxis are more expensive than London although they did make us feel like we were in Brisbane. The two taxis we took were both piloted by Indians.
While on the subject of cars, there are not many – another reason taxis are so dear. They don’t make their own and the import tax is 180%. But they have more bicycles than people. This is all part of the Danish Government’s cunning plan to make Denmark carbon neutral by 2019. They mean carbon dioxide neutral of course otherwise they would have to kill half the flora and fauna including the people. What part of us (and all other living things) isn’t water and a minuscule amount of minerals is made up of organic compounds which are all various combinations of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Governments everywhere blah blah blah……anyway, you know the rest. There may be a lack of cars but there is a plethora of boats. Not sure whether that’s factored into the carbon equation.

We did the sights from land and sea but very superficially it has to be said due to a lack of time. We saw the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Anderson fame from every angle. It’s up there with the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa – somewhat disappointing in that it’s smaller than you’d think. They do however have a copy of Michelangelo’s David in bronze and notwithstanding the wedding tackle, it’s as imposing as the original.

It’s difficult to pigeon hole Denmark and the Danes. On the one hand they are up there with the wacky Swedes when it comes to sense of humour and their lack of imagination is epitomised by the fact that every king they have ever had has been called Christian but they did invent Lego. And they are quite proud of the fact that they produce more rubber tyres than anywhere else in the world, but only for Lego cars so the amount of rubber they use would be measured by the wheelbarrow.

Got on the boat yesterday afternoon. Went to our favourite bar – The Looking Glass – after dinner. We couldn’t go too early because there was a meeting there of all the single people on the cruise followed by a meeting of the lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals and transgenders (or LGBT’s in the vernacular) – I’m not kidding. Anyone who attended both meetings would have to be quids in you’d think. And I didn’t fall backwards off my seat like last time. Those who remember my blog entry Following the Wine Traders Part 1 will know what I’m talking about.

This morning, at breakfast a lady approached us and asked if we were Australian. It wasn’t because she heard us talking, it was because her husband saw us eating and remarked on the fact that we were both using our knives and forks properly. Had we been shovelling the food down they’d have tagged us for another nationality who I don’t intend to embarrass here. How’s that for a bit of pop sociology? I must say that my powers of observation don’t extend to that level of detail but the child bride did remark on the fact that a teenage girl in one of our Irish B&B’s was using her cutlery like daggers. She was probably crap at grammar and spelling as well.

Travemunde and Lubeck in Germany today. Lubeck used to be confined to an island back in the Middle Ages. There were 1800 people on the island then and 180 breweries. It must have been settled originally by the Irish. Back then the water was so crap (literally) you had to drink beer instead so the government paid for 3 litres per person per day. And in typically Teutonic organised fashion, for babies the beer had 0.5% alcohol and increased by 0.5% per year of age until it reached 16% – called Captain’s Beer. Now there is only one brewery left. Its original brick basement was constructed in 1225 and we had a beer tasting down there – superb stuff as you would expect since they’ve had a bit of practice.

Incidentally, there’s a big old disused brewery in Copenhagen which is pre, pre Carlsberg. One of the King Christians used to give his naval personnel 10 litres of product per day. No wonder the Danish navy’s halcyon days went out with the Vikings.

Back to Germany and whereas Ireland has its pubs and Denmark has its bicycles, Germany has its wind turbines. Seriously, these bird mincers are everywhere, onshore and off. I’m sitting in one of the bars on the ship and I can see dozens of them. I hate them with the same intensity I used to reserve for wheeled luggage.

I was going to sign off now but a rather large woman on the comfy chair next to the CB just farted as she hauled herself up. So I’ll close with that.

 

I have just finished reading Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” and have to admit that I am exhausted. The book was published in 1957 and I feel like I have been reading it since then. It is by far the longest and most taxing book I’ve ever read. It has to be up there with the Bible but I haven’t read the Bible so the comparison is moot and I understand the English in Atlas Shrugged is a little easier to understand. Atlas Shrugged is over a thousand pages of tiny writing, tiny to the extent I couldn’t read it at night. I like to read in bed but either my eyes, my glasses or the bulb in the bedside lamp or combinations of all three were not up to the task.

If you know anything at all about Ayn Rand you will know she was a philosopher/novelist who also wrote many works of non-fiction. Her novels were vehicles for the promotion of her philosophy of objectivism. And didn’t she make sure the philosophy shone through. At regular intervals her main characters in this book are given the opportunity to expound on the virtues of the various facets of objectivism culminating in the main character’s 56 page speech to the people of America. Let’s see Leonardo Dicaprio or Matt Damon memorize that. I read the first few pages then the first line of each paragraph for the final 50 pages. That was hard enough. As she explains it:

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Fair enough. None of this compulsory altruism crap – conservatism with Adam Smith’s invisible hand wearing an iron glove.

The base line of objectivism relates to three axioms – existence, consciousness and identity. So all of those hippies who went off to find themselves were actually onto something although I’m sure they would be heading for Comrade Andrews’ Democratic Socialist Republic of Victoria and their soon to be legislated euthanasia laws if they knew what they were aligning with. When you think about it, why do you think about it and what’s the point. Who am I and why am I here even though I know I’m here and I know who I am, I think, and why is 42 the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything. In my view, philosophy can be described in one word; one letter actually – “I”. So enough of that.

The most interesting thing about the book in my view, is the thematic parallel with what’s happening in Australia and other western democracies at the moment. Large numbers of millennials, bless them, (and their cold war warrior fellow travellers ) due to a glitch in the education system, have never heard of Venezuela, think Che Guevara was a heroic freedom fighter and somehow or other have common cause with clapped out leftists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and socialist wannabe’s (in the best Animal Farm tradition) like Bill (Mr Thompson) Shorten. I bet some of them even feel sorry for Kim Jong Un because he’s being abused by that sexual predator, warmongering, scumbag of an American president. No, not Bill Clinton, Donald Trump.

If you read the comments after opinion pieces in the Australian newspaper you may have noticed someone called “Chris” refer to Shorten as Mr Thompson plus a few other cryptic (and direct) references to this book. Ayn’s Mr Thompson is in charge of America and wants everyone to be brought down to the lowest common denominator where equality rules. Take a bow Bill, you’ve starred retrospectively in a book which figures in numerous lists of the top 100 books of all time but not the BBC’s list funnily enough. Perhaps because they recognise themselves in the book, along with most state run and indeed, main stream media and it’s not a complimentary comparison.

Shorten, sorry, Thompson and his crew spend the duration of the book either wreaking havoc on society and industry by implementing things like the Equalization of Opportunity Act which belies its name because of its restrictions on opportunity or disavowing any responsibility for the ensuing chaos. They all at one time or another, some multiple times, channel Bart Simpson with their “you can’t blame me, it wasn’t my fault, you can’t prove anything ”entreaties”. Meanwhile as the country and the world go to shit as the socialism experiment moves inexorably down the path of nationalisation, plummeting productivity and riots, the good guys start to disappear, go on strike actually, which of course, exacerbates the problem.

Any pimply faced millennial socialists who can read and have got well and truly into the book will eventually realise that socialism is really communism with fewer guns. But the Berlin Wall fell last century so we’re going to get it right this time, aren’t we comrades. That old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is for squares, man.

I wonder sometimes what it would be like if the productive people ever did strike. I firmly believe that if the world was populated by empathetic wealth redistributors – you know, the earnest, green, humourless, virtue signalling, safe space seeking student types, redistributing an ever decreasing quantity of wealth, the human race would be extinct in a generation. Everybody would be hugging and nobody would be building anything.

There are a lot of people like this. They know who they are but they know not what they do. Didn’t someone rather famous say something similar once?

The first thing we did on landing in Dublin was pick up our hire car. That’s when things became amusing and bemusing. The vehicle check in guy told us 3 things – Ireland is well signposted, the Wexford turnoff is junction 7 on the M50 and call me anytime if you have a problem or just want a chat.
Taking the second one first, it wasn’t. Not even close. In fact after about junction 20 the M50 became the road we wanted by simply changing its name.

Regarding the first point, a typical conversation this week has gone like this :
Me : is this where we turn
Child bride : yes, we should have turned there.
Typically the sign you want to see is on the far side of the intersection so if you don’t have vision like superman you need a sat nav and we didn’t have one.
And we haven’t called him.
I could go on about the roads all day. They have N and M roads which are the good ones But they also have L roads and R roads. Perhaps left and right but sometimes L and R are on the same side of an M so I assumed they had 2 people naming them and they were going in opposite directions down the same road to save time. And how about hurtling down a motorway at 120km/hr (a civilised speed it has to be said – our nanny state should take notice) and being confronted by a roundabout. We also thought that all roads led to Amach until we realised this was Gaelic for “exit”.
A two lane road is only one and a half lanes wide but still has a white line down the middle so the buses and trucks know which side to be mostly on and the rest of us know which hedge to be in. But away from the touristy areas (where most of the traffic is) the two lane roads are three lanes wide so there is room to pull over and let impatient drivers pass. I could go on about the roads forever but let’s move on.

 

The weather’s been okay apart from day 1. The sun’s come out occasionally and……well it’s Melbourne – 4 seasons in a day but you can’t fault the Irish dedication when it comes to summer – blowing a gale and freezing cold but the kids are still in the sea and the blokes are in shorts and t-shirts because it’s July and therefore, by definition it’s mid-summer and sod the weather. As they say in Melbourne, so they say here, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”.
Apparently one of the 99 things you must do before you die is kiss the Blarney Stone. We did. It’s been kissed by millions of others over many years (since 1800). I feel a cold sore for the ages coming on. Kissing the stone is supposed to give you the Gift of the Gab so this begs the question – why do women bother (sorry girls – couldn’t resist – see Addendum to Following the Wine Traders October 7th 2017) ?

 

Interestingly the initials of the Blarney Stone are BS and if you are speaking Blarney, you are in fact bull shitting. There is a connection there which calls into question the bull shit story about Queen Elizabeth I. You’ll have to google it. I think it’s a much more modern link.

 

Did the Ring of Kerry. In other circumstances that sentence would have an entirely different meaning but however you look at it, the scenery was up there with the most spectacular we have ever scene. Expected to see Braveheart and his hordes come sweeping down the hills – the movie was made in Ireland for all the sticklers. Lots of evidence of long since melted glaciers like in the Lake District (ex geologist speaking here) and not a Tony Abbott protester to be scene. Who was the bastard who canned the carbon tax two and a half million years ago and caused the world’s glaciers to melt? No more politics until next time, promise. Apart from a dig at those wind turbine monstrosities that litter (literally) the pristine Irish countryside for no good reason unless you like higher than necessary electricity bills. To get our history fix we stood where St Finbarr stood in the sixth century one morning at Gougane Barra so there are more important historical, moral, philosophical and sporting dilemmas to contemplate than a few useless wind turbines.

 

We stayed two nights in a remote area of the Dingle Peninsular at a B&B. There are two pubs across the road within a hundred metres of each other. That’s about as remote as Ireland gets. Got to love the Irish and their priorities. When we arrived I was met by the owner with a handshake, an introduction and a cup of tea. I have never encountered that level of hospitality in all of my travels – Camp Junction House if anyone’s interested. And if you want to see something incredibly spectacular, check the google images for Connor Pass, Dingle. They don’t entirely do it justice but you’ll get the idea.

We walked from the Courtyard B&B where we were staying in Bunratty to Durty Nelly’s pub. It’s about 400m and we passed two pubs on the way. In Ireland if you point in any direction there is guaranteed to be a pub within a few hundred metres.
Passed briefly through County Limerick into County Clare on our way to the airport. But brief is enough to justify reciting the best ever of those verses named after that part of the world :
There once was a girl from Cape Cod
Who thought all good things came from God
But it wasn’t the almighty who lifted her nighty
It was Roger the lodger the sod.
Ta daaa.

I’m sure there’s more but this is enough for now.
Off to Copenhagen tomorrow and an early start.

A couple of years ago, the child bride and I did an expedition through the wilds of rural England and Ireland then slummed it round the Baltic on an upmarket cruise ship. Following is Part 1 of 7 describing our adventures.
Well the first stage is over. We left “sunny” England at sparrows this morning (Sunday), flew all the way to Dublin in cloud and drove down to Wexford in the pouring rain. But this is the start of stage 2 so back to the beginning.

After an uneventful flight from Brisbane to London we reached the threshold of Merry England, the immigration hall at Heathrow, and stepped into what can only be described as a zoo. I thought we were queuing up to board the arc. Thousands of people in a mile long queue that wasn’t moving due to a surfeit of processors – tea break I guess. Work to rule and all that. There was a bloke up the back doing a roaring trade selling seats in a Calais shipping container bound for Dover.

A nice touch in amongst all of this chaos is that immigration will process you as a family unit if you are travelling with someone. Consequently, when more immigration desks were eventually opened they were tied up for ages by roly poly, hirsute blokes in Bermuda shorts and polo shirts with their black bagged harem of 10, each carrying a child. Actually I’m exaggerating here. There weren’t 21 people at the desk in front of us. It was 16.
Anyway we eventually escaped to our hotel then picked up our car the next morning. We got an upgrade to a Jeep with all the mod cons – only had 5k on the clock and went like a scalded cat. This was deeply concerning to Nigella the sat nav lady. Plus the car kept telling me when to change gears. So I had Nigella constantly telling me to slow down and the car constantly telling me to change bloody gears. But we managed…..when I found the handbrake which was a button. So off to the Cotswolds.
Oxford was nice. There were cohorts of freshly minted graduates strutting around with proud parents and grandparents in tow. None of the current wave of idiotic political correctness was evident fortunately. I felt inspired….so we went to the pub – The King’s Arms obviously. And next time a Harry Potter movie comes on TV I’ll be able to say I’ve been to Hogwarts.
Bourton-on-the-Water was cute but odd – full of young Asians and old English. But it was a Tuesday so everyone between 20 and 60 was probably working in London or Birmingham (no, not really, that was a joke). Having been less than fully occupied in a vocational sense recently, the fact that people might be working has been a fading memory for me.

Stratford was next. Shakespeare right? Well yes but we found a pub that had been operating since 1594 – The Garrick Arms. That’s almost 200 years before Europeans settled in Aus. Love the history. Then we headed to Manchester and it was downhill rapidly (from our livers’ perspective) for the next few days.

Wednesday afternoon and evening with a cousin and his family was sensational except that the next morning we felt like we’d given Guns N Roses on tour a run for their money. Thanks everyone for never allowing us to have an empty drinking hand. Thanks a bunch.
Next was more great family hospitality from another cousin and family. First a trip to Blackpool to observe the cultural elite of the north-west (there’s my inner snob emerging). We went to the top of the tower which was quite a thrill. The last time we did that we lost any record of it when our camera was purloined in London by one of the south east’s cultural elite. And I can understand why the UK has got so good at athletics. Every second male wears a track suit although they do seem to all walk at quarter to three carrying a cannon ball in their shorts.
We talk about gentrification of tired old suburbs that have basically gone to the pack on all levels. My aunt lives in a street in a suburb that are now respectively the Park Lane and Mayfair of Wythenshawe in Manchester it seems. From being a focus of, as the bureaucrats would say, socio-economic under-achievement, you are now tripping over BMW’s and Mercs on the road and in driveways. The oligarchs have discovered the north west. What a turnaround in a few short years.

Prior to leaving my cousin lead the expedition to find the Hertz drop-off at the airport which had been cunningly hidden in another county.
Manchester airport and more bloody queues. At Air Lingus it was100m long with one check-in counter operating – ONE! After experiencing Heathrow then this I have come to the conclusion that the ability to queue is what made this country great. If the Brits queued like they do in a certain South Asian country there would be anarchy. And while shuffling interminably towards the desk I discovered that like many Asians, some Irish struggle with the concept of personal space. I guess it’s just their natural affection for people in general but what a nation of characters.
More to come.

A while ago I had a run in with a sharp pointed implement. The story is related here as a warning.

You would think it unnecessary to issue a warning against mixing football, comfy chairs, red wine and sharp knives. But it seems there is no limit to the rather unfortunate consequences which can arise when one considers the endless permutations resulting from the juxtaposition of those four variables.
Last night I settled into my favourite chair with a generous splash of red at my elbow and a steak dinner, courtesy of my lovely wife, on my lap (the dinner, not the child bride). A tough game of footy beckoned. Sometime later said wife returned to find me fast asleep with the now food-relieved plate still on my lap and the fork and (very sharp) steak knife clutched in my hand like a drowning man clutches a life preserver. As a consequence, she removed the plate and unknowingly (or was it??) left me and my eating implements to our collective fate.
At game’s end the cacophony which signals victory for the underdog, as happened in this instance, contrived to wake me up. At some point between the knife (the fork is now irrelevant to the story) being riga mortised in my hand and my waking, it had migrated down the side of the chair, nestling snugly, sharp side in as it turned out, against my side, just above the hip bone and just below the left kidney. On waking I swivelled to the side for some unknown reason and experienced a somewhat sharp (pun not intended) pain in my person. As you, dear reader, can imagine, this resulted in my awaking rapidly from my sleep induced torpor and I leapt to my feet.

On placing my hand on the area from which the eye watering pain was emanating, I felt the now located sharp implement protruding from my side. “That’s not supposed to be there” I thought, and proceeded to remove it. I can confirm that withdrawal is just as painful as entry. Fortunately it was only in far enough to not immediately fall out when I stood up as our steak knives are of the cheap variety and are therefore quite light. The upside is that I now have a cast iron excuse to not exert myself in the garden today.
As a consequence of last night’s misfortune (which wasn’t as bad as two Christmas Eves ago when 12 stitches in my arm was the end result) this morning I have been laughed at by my wife and my youngest brother. It’s a sad world when one’s adversity becomes the source of mirth for others although as the brother pointed out, his kids do it all the time. But then he has been raising them to be sociopaths.

Addendum

Another Friday night. Watching the footy. Dinner was pasta and meatballs (not steak) which has been despatched; spoon has been placed in the dishwasher before it attempted to do a King Lear on my Gloucester and no stab wounds to date. Will no doubt wake up with the red wine glass inserted in my forehead.
Visited my dermatologist yesterday to continue the ongoing crusade against the sins of the child visited on the adult (sun-baking as a 10 year old was not smart for someone with my complexion). She commented about the stab wound in my side and I told her someone has to protect the city and risk life and limb rounding up the bad guys. She didn’t believe me. My disguise remains intact.

 

Have you noticed that little sign over the sink in an aircraft toilet. It says “not drinking water”. And just next to it there’s a drawer full of toothbrushes and toothpaste. This raises a number of questions. If we shouldn’t be drinking it should we be putting it in our mouths even if we spit it out? Will the toothpaste kill the greebies that obviously lurk in this ungreen, unsmelly, uncontaminated with obvious wriggly things, water.

In the backblocks of what would be considered lesser developed countries where there is no bottled water, beer is a reasonable substitute for water for cleaning one’s teeth and I have heard of scotch being used although this is a rather expensive way of going about it. Scotch without the toothpaste would be a much more palatable option for a few days.

And if this water’s not to be drunk, where did it come from in the first place. At one end of Sydney airport is the Cook River. Next time I get on a plane parked at that end I’ll be looking out for a bloke in airport high-viz standing next to the plane sucking on a hose dangling in that river.

Anyway, I’ve inadvertently swallowed that water when cleaning my teeth or washing out the taste of the airline food, or swallowing sleeping pills. My GP assures me that the recurring bouts of cholera are caused by breathing contaminated air.

I may have already mentioned that in the event of my actually writing a book about travel, I already have a title for said book. It took 11 years of regular international travel to come up with it so as you would expect it’s a doozy – one Dickens, Hemingway and Steinbeck (Jason, Barry and Daryl respectively) would be proud of. I was sitting in a taxi with a colleague in Seoul one day and I said to him “You know, there are no yellow cars in Korea” and he spent the next two days trying to find one. And thus a title was born. Of course the stodgy, conservative and superstitious Koreans have loosened up considerably in the years since, what with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads. So now you do occasionally see a yellow car……. in a crumpled mess wrapped round a light pole. Actually, to be fair, the “stodgy” Koreans will entertain you to within an inch of your life given half a chance but when it comes to automobile paint strips, they’re Oliver Cromwell.
We all do this when we travel. That is, spot the most obscure differences between our homes and our destinations. Here’s one for you. On a hot summer’s afternoon especially down by the beach you will notice (so I’ve been told) that many young women forget to don a certain item of undergarmentry worn mostly on the frontal part of the torso, north of the bellybutton and south of the chin. Don’t even bother looking for this particular fashion quirk in Japan.
And while on the subject of Japanese fashion, every Japanese male wears a dark blue suit from Monday to Friday. Of course he makes up for it on the weekend and on vacation in the most emphatic way. Witness the garb worn on the golf course and you will be looking at a gaggle of golfers who steadfastly ignore their exasperated wives’ advice on colour and pattern coordination.
We also look for the occasional reassurance. Some destinations go out of their way to accommodate this – fish and chip shops and Boddington’s beer in Torremolinos for the tastefully discerning British tourist for example. In strange or unfamiliar places we appreciate that reassurance. That’s why many people like to travel in pairs or groups so even in the most unfamiliar or hostile of environments we can look at the person standing next to us and think “I can run faster than you if the shit hits the fan”.
We westerners shouldn’t demonstrate our insensitivity to the mysteries of especially the east without pointing out that Australia, for all its banality can be idiosyncratic and mysterious as well. Why, for instance, do we walk into polling booths with our eyes wide open and vote for idiots. Basically because notwithstanding the open eyes, we have our thumb in our bum and our mind in neutral and on reflection, we’re not alone in this regard. And why are there no taxis after 10.00pm? As I have previously mentioned, in Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into Nathan Road at any time of day or night, you’ll be hit by a taxi (or occasionally by a Rolls Royce).
The child bride and I lived in Tasmania for three years. Tasmania is about as big as the park I can see across the road from where I am writing this. Yet Tasmanians wouldn’t travel as far on their holidays as we would to the shops. There were people on the west coast who had never been to the east coast. If it wasn’t for a hilly bit in the middle and a few big trees you could see the west side from the east side. Yes, many people crave familiarity and are terrified of losing it although Tasmanians do have an excuse for not seeking out new and interesting places. Many of them think the world ends at Bass Strait.

Driving from Brisbane to the Gold Coast hardly qualifies as travelling but if it’s to see one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time – Status Quo – on possibly their last tour, and certainly last in one regard which I’ll cover below, then I’m prepared to extend the definition. Besides, they came all the way from England so to drive an hour or so to see them seemed only fair. Incidentally, while sitting at our hundredth or so red light I was beginning to think this was not such a good idea. There are more red lights on the Gold Coast than the Reeperbahn, Kings Cross, the Rossebuurt, Roppongi, Patpong and the White House (during the Clinton era) combined. You’ll have to look those places up if they don’t all ring a bell. I’ve been in the same city as all of them except the White House. That’s how I knew.

The concert was held last night at the Star Hotel and Casino at Broadbeach on the Goldie and what an eclectic crowd that place attracts. Everyone from fake ID’d teenagers with their arses hanging out of the shortest of tight, short skirts to 90 year old Chinese grannies. Of course being a casino, the gambling obsessed Chinese are ubiquitous. The crowd that filtered out of the casino and into the theatre to see the Quo were more akin to an Australian Conservatives gathering (in appearance) although I don’t think the average Australian Conservatives crowd would know all of the words to Status Quo’s extensive back catalogue. There were a few outliers with grey ponytails, some sported by women, but since Francis Rossi cut his off a few years back it seemed like a rather superfluous gesture. And there were a few kids who’d been dragged along by their parents (or grandparents) as we had been known to do with ours some (many) years back.

There are some fundamental differences between a Quo/Stones/Eagles (our last three concerts) crowd and a Taylor Swift (for example) crowd, not least minor things like age, fashion, size (individual as opposed to collective) and willingness to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tickets although to be fair, that only applied to the Stones and the Eagles. But one thing is quite similar I assume, although not having ever been to a social media fuelled, hormone busting, like, best everrrr Justin Bieber concert I can’t be certain. Youngsters can be quite rude because many have not been schooled properly in common courtesies and oldsters can be quite rude because “I paid a bloody fortune for this ticket so I’ll come and go as I bloody well please…and spill beer on the person in the row in front as I squeeze past in the dark”. The young country singer who opened for Status Quo was very adept at embarrassing the latecomers, much to the amusement of the more polite section of the crowd. Take a bow Travis Collins.

The show was called “Last Night of the Electrics”. After this tour is finished it’s acoustic or aquostic as they call it, from then on. Not surprising really when you consider the number of shows they do and have done over the years (more than most) and the volume at which they perform. Their ears (certainly Rossi’s) must be mush. Just on the noise thing, the child bride and I saw them in 1976 at Brisbane’s now demolished Festival Hall. We were six rows from the front and my ears were still ringing when we took our seats last night, 41 years later. If Spinal Tap’s amplifiers go up to 11 then Quo’s go up to 12. Having said that, last night’s show was loud but manageable in the aural department but we were two rows further back in row 8 so that may have been why it didn’t seem as loud as in 1976.

Rather than “Last Night of the Electrics” I would have called it “Still Having a Bloody Good Time”. If I could magically transform my very modest musical ability into something a bit more respectable, to the extent that I could hold my own in a top echelon band, I’d want to be in this one. Of course I’ve said that every time we’ve seen the Eagles (five times) but that’s more from a technical excellence perspective than a fun perspective. I also thought it would be a hoot to be in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers but now that Tom has left the building, it would hardly seem the same. No, when a bunch of musicians laugh at each other and take the piss when they (rarely) make a mistake that we mostly don’t even notice and then let the crowd in on the joke, that’s the band for me. None of this hunched over the instruments, terminally serious Radiohead bullshit for me. Or Eric Clapton demonstrating virtuoso capability but not uttering a word other than “thankyou” or cracking a smile for a whole concert.

I love that there’s no preaching and no sentimentality with these guys. There’s certainly banter and audience interaction but no preachy social justice warrior hypocrisy and promotion of pet causes. There can’t be too many diseases or inequalities left that don’t have some second rate celebrity’s name attached to them. There wasn’t even a mention of Rick Parfitt. Some bands would have put a telecaster on a stand in the corner or a cardboard cut-out or some such tribute on the stage. But they didn’t. But I reckon Francis did his own little tribute. At one point everyone else left the stage, even the drummer and Francis played the intro to a song on his own in semi darkness, a song Rick used to intro. Maybe I’m wrong – doesn’t matter because it works for me.

One more difference between 1976 and 2017. Back then, as soon as they started to play everyone stood up. Not such a big deal when you’re six rows from the front but when everyone in front of you stands on their chairs you have to follow suit. The cute but diminutive child bride was not impressed. Now, we (the typical Status Quo audience) prefer to stay sitting down. Some did get up and dance and good luck to them as long as they don’t dance in front of me. The girls with their Stevie Nicks hair-dos wave their arms around and blokes do Dad dances and think they’re cool. Even I know they aren’t. But as long as I have an uninterrupted view of the stage go ahead and act like a dork.

We got to the second and last song of the encore before the All Blacks front row immediately in front of us stood up. I thought the concert was over because it went dark all of a sudden but I could still hear muffled music, like it was coming from a radio in an adjoining room such was the totality of the wall erected in front of us. I looked at the woman sitting next to me (not the CB, the other side) and we shrugged our shoulders and stood up – what else could we do. No amount of “DOWN IN FRONT” which usually works at the cricket and football, was going to work here.

Brilliant show. That’s another tick on the bucket list.

There are some things we just don’t talk about but are so natural and in some cases, confronting, you have to wonder why (because they’re confronting I guess). For example toilet breaks are never written into the script in American films whereas the Europeans love them. Like Kim Jong Un, Hollywood’s elite don’t excrete – neat slogan eh? Well at least most of them think their shit doesn’t stink which gets me to the topic of the day which I will approach in my usual roundabout way.

If you’re in a frequent flyer program, you’ll know how airlines send you those “Help us to help you” forms to fill out or direct you to the profile page on the website. This is so we can tell them we like opera of polo or flower arranging. Why, I’m not sure. My boss did get invited to a golf tournament once by an airline but that’s the only time in 30 years of travel I’ve heard of anything like that happening. And it was about 30 years ago. If an airline is thinking of slinging one my way, can I go to the Superbowl? Cheers.

In said profile, I always put that I want an aisle seat on the lower deck (for double decker planes you understand). But all airlines number their seats differently so unless you ask at check in, you don’t necessarily know where you’re sitting until you get there. Why don’t I ask? Because I bloody forget.

So I’m in 11H which is an aisle seat (woo hoo) but upper deck and right at the front against the bulkhead. That’s right the front row is row 11. I had to get up at 4.15am to get down to Sydney to catch this plane to Singapore so I’m grumpy. And then there’s the smell, which brings us back to where we started.

Smells on planes can be lumped (or wafted) into two groups – those you make and those others make. They can also be ranked according to desirability. At one extreme we have smoke, for obvious reasons and at the other extreme is the alluring scent a Singapore Girl leaves as she floats by. Personal odours are way down at the smoke end.

I once heard English doctor/writer/actor/comic/etc Jonathan Miller being interviewed and he commented on the propensity for air travel to make him fart and the “fact” that that they were “strangely odourless” (his comment). This puzzled me for many years because (1) he’s a medical doctor (2) he’s wrong and (3) assuming the first two assertions are correct, why can’t he smell his own farts. I’m also assuming all olfactory components are present and accounted for.

Anyone who has travelled at least a few times will be aware of that situation when someone drops one and there is nowhere to hide. Fortunately it doesn’t last as long as if you are in a closed room or heaven forbid, in a lift. This is because the air-conditioning in an aeroplane is strong enough to suck the dermis (that’s your second layer of skin) out through your pores.

Having pondered this riddle for many years and refused to ask for expert advice (I don’t ask for directions either), I decided it was because air is pumped into the cabin at the top and sucked out through vents at floor level. This means any olfactory nastiness emanating from the trouser region has to battle against the wind (excuse the pun) to get as high as your nose. But God help your feet.

This theory prevailed in my mind until on one subsequent trip I accidentally listened to the safety demonstration. Apparently a row of floor lights will guide you to an exit if someone in first class has accidentally set his polyester track-suit on fire and the plane has filled with smoke. You hit the floor and as the kids’ saying goes “get down low and go go go”. So much for the theory because this scenario assumes the smoke is being sucked up not down. Of course it’s only relevant in the event of a tracksuit mishap while on the ground. If you’re more than a few metres off the ground and it’s anything other than a smouldering tracksuit, forget it.

So why don’t Jonathan Miller’s farts smell. I have no idea. Maybe he only eats rose petals.

We are now going to leave smells and get onto toilets (another execrable pun which is also almost a pun itself). And if we go right back to the start, this was the original rationale for writing this piece. So let’s cut to the cheese, sorry chase. (I’m on a roll).

Seat 11C isn’t so bad except for what I’ve already said and for one other thing. The convenience is about a foot away from my feet. There is a flimsy inch thick wall between us but it’s not enough to disguise the whoosh which sweeps from the little room immediately in front of me then under my seat (below the floor – this is Singapore Airlines after all) to who knows where.

At the start of the flight it whooshed three times over a few minutes and no one emerged. Funny what you notice isn’t it? But something else slowly emerged and then they wheeled out the brunch trolley. The eggs thought it was their birthday. Harmonizing sulphurous fumes everywhere. Eventually the person who had been sitting (presumably) immediately in front of me barrelled through the door and hastily resumed his seat, having despatched….no no no, we’re not going there.

But some things are indelibly seared into your brain, never to be expunged. And one of them is pushing open an unlocked toilet door only to see a lady who forgot to lock said door squatting on the seat. Needless to say, having a complete stranger barging in on what is generally a most private moment is a reason for considerable dismay and apparently a justification for peeing on the floor. One needs to be very light on one’s feet in this circumstance.

So the upshot is, if I’m unfortunate enough to get a seat next to the khasi and someone steps through that door, I shut my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, thumbs up my nose and think of England.

 

Well, this will be the last journal entry for this trip before we fly home tomorrow. We’re now in London again and have just had our first pub lunch. We were here for 3 days 3 weeks ago but it was the 3 days leading up to the friendly between England and Scotland at Wembley. The pubs were full of blokes in skirts speaking a foreign language and Trafalgar Square was turned into a massive beer garden so actually getting through the door of a pub during those three days was somewhat problematic. Anyway, we cracked it today.

 

Just had a nice relaxing three days in Switzerland, starting in Zurich and then 2 days in Geneva. I have never seen so much conspicuous wealth as in that place. Plenty of Rolls Royces and Ferraris with various Arabic (the most common language we heard while there) number plates. In Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into the road you’ll either be hit by a Rolls Royce or by a taxi. Here it would be somewhat similar except for the taxis.

 

The train trip from Zurich to Geneva was nice. I didn’t realise that all of the open spaces in Switzerland have been mowed. The whole place looks like a park. And the train trip reinforced something I have come to firmly believe since being here. For the best part of 3 hours, all the way from Zurich to Geneva, two young women across the aisle from us talked….and talked….and talked. In fact they did not shut their yaps for more than 5 seconds the whole way. It reminded me of when we were here 3 weeks ago and were queuing for the London Dungeons. We had to queue for about 40 minutes and two teenage girls behind us did not shut up for one second of that time. Two blokes can sit in quiet contemplation for hours without feeling the urgent need to communicate other than telepathically. Two or more women can’t….at all….ever. But if the word “like” was excised from the English language, 30 million women under the age of 30 would be immediately struck dumb. Do us all (as in us blokes) a favour girls and just STFU occasionally.

 

It’s been a fantastic three weeks with only one thing left to do before we head home tomorrow. We are having dinner tonight with a good friend and her partner. She works for the same company I work for and he is Welsh so they’ve been over here frightening his relatives in the villages.

It just remains now to get home and see if the cats have eaten each other. We didn’t leave them to their own devices – they are being supervised so, you know, ignore the eating each other bit.