Oooh, me bloody head. I went to see Hugh Cornwall (remember him, front man of “The Stranglers”) last night, at the Australian National University, he’s doing a tour of Aus.
The show will feature two sets – the first will feature a collection of Stranglers hits and classic solo material, with the second featuring The Stranglers seminal debut album ‘Rattus Norvegicus IV’ being performed in its entirety for the first time in Australia” “Cornwell is one of the UK’s finest songwriting talents and accomplished live performers – the original guitarist, singer and main songwriter in the Stranglers, Hugh enjoyed massive UK and European success with ten hit albums and 32 top forty singles, etching himself into the UK’s musical psyche with songs such as Peaches, No More Heroes, Golden Brown, Always the Sun, Grip, Nice N Sleazy, Duchess and No Mercy, all of which will be performed on this tour.”
Unfortunately for me the kids running the at the ANU bar didn’t know that Laphroaig is premium Scotch and were charging me the “happy shopper whisky” price, which was nice. Not only that but the lazy buggers didn’t bother measuring the tots, just splashed in a (very) large one when asked. Which was even nicer. So at that price and volume I was damned if there was going to be any left in the bottle by the end of the gig! (There wasn’t.) I did my normal routine of ringing my nephew Shaun from the gig, much to his amusement. I also rang my good mate Wynn and had a nice chat with him. Well at least I had a nice chat, christ knows what he got out of it. Hugh was very good, and it was great to “pogo” at the front again.
I got to chat with Hugh after the gig, briefly, as he was hawking and signing his CD’s, lovely chap.Lee-Anne found it most amusing when she picked me up after the gig, to find that I was now in love with not only the front man for the stranglers, but the whole of the support band. (Shame they are lezzers.)
So here I am on my day off, with a simply stunning hangover, writing this crap to you.
So what have we been up to? Well autumn that most glorious of seasons is now in full swing. I’ve been doing some shots of the changing leaves for a local website. One day when we were down by the lake while walking the dogs we came across a tree full of chesnuts. Free grub, can’t be bad. So that’s why this months gallery is all reds and oranges and chestnuts. Apart from all that though I must apologise for the bunch of boring crap I’m bringing to your attention this month, nothing of note has happened, so be warned.
Thanks for all the “get well soon” email wishes for Lee-Anne, they were very much welcome, although unfortunately they haven’t worked. We saw the gyno recently, as Lee-Anne, contrary to his assertions, didn’t get over the pain in the four weeks forecast, and was, and still is, experiencing pain. From his examination (I was present, really weird seeing another bloke examining your wife’s “women’s bits”,) it looks like the incision and stitching has trapped a nerve. This has happened despite the self removal by Lee-Anne of her internal stitch.
Oh yes, self removal. One night while Bethy and I were watching TV, Lee-Anne came out of the shower with what looked like a bit of meat basting string to show us. Let me quote her in her own words;
So, yesterday I was scratching a particularly itching point of my scar when I managed to extract a seven inch piece of surgical thread from my body. My wound is now as itchy as fuck and painful to move with and I purportedly go back to work on Monday. Arse biscuits.It was from the drainage hole and the drains were removed on 10 March. I hadn’t been told about any stitches. In fact I had been told I had no stitches and was held together with the equivalent of surgical gaffa tape. Argh. It was the revolutionary stitch that was to dissolve in three months time that no-one had actually told me was in there. In fact I was specifically told that there was no stitches there by the nurse who changed my dressing. It is back to work for me on Monday despite me now not being stitched any longer. He has had women play competition squash on their first week back from a hysterectomy. How foolish of me not to be one of them. I must have chosen unwisely.
Poor bugger. She’s now back at work, but has to have her chair reclined at an extreme angle, which makes her look like a lady of leisure, and must give the other staff a hoot.
You may remember I tried to dismantle Frankenstein I our old computer, and rebuild it with parts from Frankenstein II (Bethy’s old one,) as a means of keeping the old box running a while longer. Well that came to no good, and coincidentally, a few weeks later Frank I had a massive nervous breakdown and died on us. Pure coincidence, nothing to do with anything I had done to it. Honest. This almost resulted in us losing all our data, passwords, stored mails, bank details, tax details etc etc. Not only that, but as me and Lee-Anne both have active “net lives”, the fights over the i-pad got very bloody, and Bethy had to hide her laptop from us.
Fortunately the people at ATM computers got it back up and running again, and I was able to back up all our important stuff onto external hard drives and discs. I asked Eva of ATM what she thought the prognosis for Frank was; “If it was a horse you’d have it shot”, was the blunt reply.
The following night I had a chat with my sister Louise about computers, as she builds her own these days. I gave her Frank I’s specs, she was quietly giggling at them when I dropped the bomb, “running on windows 98”, the phone went quiet. “For a minute there I thought you said you were still running windows 98. (laughs) A 13 year old operating system, the one they stopped supporting six years ago.” You should have heard her when I admitted that’s what I did say, I thought she was going to pee herself.
The boss (Lee-Anne) gave me the go ahead, and I started bidding on e-bay for a new computer. I had thrown in some good bids, but was getting nowhere. I phoned Lee-Anne from work; “How much can I spend on a new computer love?” I was hoping she’d say around the $500 mark, as that’s what the second hand computers I had been bidding on were going for. “I don’t know, what’s a reasonable one cost these days? About a grand be ok?” I nearly had to go to the toilet I was so excited, a geek wet dream come true. “Oh, I’ll get one for a lot less than that!” he said, nearly creaming his jeans.
So I got one, after a lot of soul searching and heartache. Just for you geeks, here’s the spec;
Intel i7 (quad core) chip
3.8 ghz
8 gig RAM
Windows 7
Terabyte HDD
And lots more! I got it for $735, which was a bargain.Although having said that, the canny buggers now sell them with a “trial version” of Windows 7 installed, which they kindly offer to upgrade to the full OS and install for you, (for only another $105.)
It’s phenomenal though! Back in the day, when I was making my “music” on old Frank I, the chip would max out on 17 instruments, and refuse to go any further. If I pushed it, smoke would come out of the vents, (or maybe that was his protest at my music?) I’ve thrown 50 + instruments at the new chip and they are barely registering. My music making has gone back to the beginning and I’m redoing everything, it’ll take me bloody years to come up with a finished track now, (I can hear the cheers from here, bastards.)
We went to see Matt, our little Gothic accountant, the other day. We had to; the emails from him were getting more and more frantic. Apparently we had left it to the very last moment to get our tax returns in, and were on the verge of getting surcharged.
So we booked in to see him with a day or two to spare. It turned out to be well worth it. Lee-Anne’s tax took about ten minutes to get sorted. But then he did mine, mine took an age. This was mainly due to Matt having to look up arcane accountancy and tax law, international deficits and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Matt is a hoot though, every so often he’ll just throw his hands up and say: “I haven’t the foggiest what this all does, but we’ll call it $2000 as that will put you over the sub-domestic- interchange-fallopian tube deficit for the last year, and we’ll get some cash back off that.” We nod sagely and agree with him.
Due to me having to fork out a fair bit on the house in the UK, for repairs and new carpets and redecorating the place between tenants. And due to us not having tenants for a while, and therefore no rent coming in for three months, our property in Cornwall recorded a massive loss. This I could write off against tax, Matt infomed me. Combining this with me being charged way over the odds on my payroll tax, led to me getting a bit back.
Matt scored Lee-Anne $500 in returned tax, not to be sniffed at. And me? $8000. Yup, eight grand!!
“Sweet as” you may think. Well not quite. It paid off my credit card, and paid for the computer, and is now gone.
BUT! It’s set us up for our next UK trip, as I now have grace enough on my credit card to pay for our flight tickets. We’re planning on being back next Xmas, as this is Bethy’s only extended break, her summer holiday in fact, it makes sense for us to come back then. Which may sound a bit unfair, asking her to swap a Aussie summer for a British winter, but Bethy’s looking forward to experiencing a Dickensian Xmas. (Though how the hell she expects to get that in Llanelli is beyond me.) Lee-Anne of course, as soon as this idea got into her head, was in i-pad heaven. This wasn’t too bad as she was at home recovering, and it gave her something productive to do, and something to look forward to. So then every other five minutes while I was at work, I’d get e-mails of this sort; “I’ve found a lovely cottage in Peter Tavy, it woudl suit us down to the ground. It’s got an open fire, views over Dartmoor, and it’s near the pub. Also a DVD player, and flat screen TV, and it’s only $xxxx a week!” Which would be closely followed by another which would start; “Scrap that one, I’ve found won with oak beams, a dishwasher, etc etc…”
So the plan is to have Xmas in Llanelli, possibly at the flat we stayed at the last time we were there, so as to spend Xmas with my Mam and sister and oldest mates. I haven’t had Xmas in Llanelli in what? 25 years maybe? Then down to Dartmoor for a week or more, walking on the moors and catching up with Devon/Somerset based friends, and a trip into Cornwall to go se the folks at Sennen. Then possibly over to Paris, or Ireland, or Czech Republic, or Japan for some time. I’ll let you know how things evolve.
One thing that’s going great guns for us at the moment is the Aussie dollar, it’s now worth 65p. The last time we came over it was worth 49p, (the time before 41p.) 16p may not sound a huge amount more, but multiply that by X thousand in cash we’ll be bringing over, and you can see it willl make a substantial difference to our spending ability. It may even give us enough to cope with the petrol prices there.
Bloody Salvos. I did it again today, as I do every time I go there. Every time we go to the Salvos (Salvation Army charity shop,) for a rummage and to get some bargains, Lee-Anne comes home with some new blouses for work, a useful crock-pot or the like, and sometimes a rare Jackson Pollock. Me? I get a dozen books, 90% of which I have already read, and most of which usually already own, (sometimes they are ones which I donated to the Salvos,) and inevitably a broken piece of electrical equipment. One which I would not need or find use for, even if it were not broken. I have this nieve and trusting fixed idea that the items I buy there will work. This runs contrary to a lifetime of experience the working ability of items purchased. I can hear the staff there now; “What should we do with this electric egg cosy? We can’t sell it, it’s fucked.” “Bang a $15 sticker on it and leave it out, Taff will be in sometime this week.” This time it was a new, but screwed, wireless computer keyboard I wasted 15 bucks on. I mean to say, I already have five or more keyboards. Though having said that, most of them don’t function due to me giving them tea baths. But this one was shiny and new and wireless. It wasn’t until I was hitting it with a hammer in order to try and get it working that I asked myself; “Why buy a fucking wireless one? What possible extra use is that?” Fuctifino.
Remember the lawn mower debacle? It gets better; Canberra Mower Service kept my mower for over 2 months for a basic service, charged me $280 for it, (I only pay $170 to get my car serviced,) it broke down straight after getting it home. Took it back to them for them to fix it, they kept it another month, it broke down straight after getting it home. They loaned me one of theirs, it broke down as soon as I got it home. I was begining to think my lawn was cursed. Thanks to the advice given on a local online forum, we were told of an old boy who serviced mowers at the local “Trash & Treasure Market”(Car Boot sale). We visited the guy, who goes by the name of Dusty, at the market one morning. We bought a decent 4 stroke mower off him for $150, with a bit of warranty. Lovely old chap, obviously making a few bob in retirement, and all strength to his elbow for that. We gave him our old mowers, yes we had two, so he could canibalise them for parts. He wanted to give us some cash back for them But giving them to him meant we didn’t have to pay for a skip to fill in order for them to be taken away, so we declined.On the way home we realised that we could purchase a mower off him every six months, and still pay less per year than we paid for ONE SERVICE at Canberra Mower Services.
Bethy’s basketball team did well this season. After a middling start, they made it to the league play offs. Unfortunatly they got no further, ending up fourth (out of twelve teams) in the league.
Well we saw two comedians this month, Tommy Teirnan and Ardal O’Hanlon.
Tommy T we saw at Canberra theatre, part of his “Designer Wino” tour down under. The fun kicked off before the show started. Some guy, who was obviously well known to a group of lads sat behind us, came in a bit late, (though before the show had started.) The lads gave him an ovation and a rousing shout, and he looked very embarrassed by it. So from then on, following their lead, whenever he stood up or moved, the whole audience gave him a cheer and a round of applause. Which embarrassed him even further.
Tommy was supported by a local guy, who wasn’t half bad, though not so good as for me to remember his name. The nice thing about his set was that he was able to do some Canberra based gags, which for a change didn’t revolve around how fucking boring Canberra is as a city* (Hint to comdeians playing Canberra; we know it’s not exciting here, we live here, you don’t need to tell us.) Tommy Teirnan himself has a really explosive show, very aggressive and quite near the knuckle at times. At one point he informed the audience that he had been diagnosed with “Borderline Personality Disorder,” (I’ve had clients with BPD, they are the biggest arseholes on the planet.) He then went into the most outrageous and dramatic portrayal of what HE believed a person with BPD would act like. Yelling, screaming and throwing himself around the stage, very realistic in fact. It was so good it was almost scary, pretty much confirmed for me that whoever did his diagnosis had been spot on.
Tiernan – a comedian who seems to thrive on the purity, and the challenge, of stand up – also touched on religion, the troubled Irish economy and the well worn topic of the Irish’s love for a drink in his 60 minute routine. But it’s when Tiernan offered a comedic glimpse into his family life – his debate over thoroughbred vs mongrel pets was memorable – that the crowd really worked itself into a lather.
* If you want to see the highlights of “what’s on in Canberra” on any average weekend, check out this site. Impressive? No.
We went up to Sydney to see Ardal O’Hanlon. Driving up there was made less terifying as; a) we’d brought the GPS, and b) we’d pre-paid for an motorway e-pass. This was much better than our past visits when we’d ended up driving several laps of Sydney, totally and utterly lost, and terrified the cops were going to chase us for unpaid road tolls. We had scored a room at Australian Sunrise Lodge, a strange place, but good value. Unfortunately for her Bethy had to share a room with us. Poor sod, I wouldn’t wish that on my dog. We drove up on the Friday, got settled in and went and perused Newtown, Sydney’s most happening and trendy area. Sydeny University (population 31,634 full-time undergraduate and 16,141 graduate students) is just down the road from Newtown. So as you can imagine the place is rammed with clothes and accessory shops, music shops, foody shops and every other bloody hip and tredy sort of shop, all catering to the masses of students and bohemians who infest the area. I was surprised, nay, amazed at how restrained Bethy was when confronted with every teenage girl’s idea of shopping heaven. I commented on this. “Just wait until tomorrow,” was her ominous reply.
We found a cafe which was still serving breakfast mid-afternoon, my kind of eatery. It was so good we ate there three times in three days, I was living on breakfasts. The staff got to know me by name.
On the main drag, King Street, you can find speciality shops, some great bookshops, a number of excellent restaurants and numerous cafe’s and eateries. There are also vintage fashion shops, music stores, antique and import shops. There is also a strong Greek presence here, dating back to the beginnings of Sydney as a city. There are some great Greek delis in Newtown reflecting this, with great coffee, olives, cheeses and other assorted imported and local delicacies
That night we saw the movie “Paul”, it’s absolutely hysterical, go see it tomorrow, no go now! The next day, after a great big breakfast, Bethy lived up to her promise and took us on a whirlwind tour of the shops and stores. She bought herself some amazing outfits, and looked a real stunner in all of them. She just doesn’t realise what she’s got this girl. In the Evening, after a great meal at a Greek/Italian restaurant, we saw Ardal. We could have also seen Greg Proops who was doing a set before Ardal’s (Ardal didn’t start until 9.30 pm.) But unfortunately we hadn’t seen the advert for his set. Which was a pisser. Ardal was great, very very funny. You can still glimpse echoes of Father Dougal McGuire in his act, but he’s not playing off this. He did tell the tale of how the musician vegan baldy bloke Moby, was a big fan of “Father Ted”, and once asked Ardal to do the famous “My Lovely Horse” song with him at a gig. Ok, no big shakes.
The gig was in Ireland, at Slane Castle. Supporting U2. In front of 80,000 U2 fans. You can just imagine what Bongo and the rest of that po-faced bunch of shites thought about that!
We finally got around to watching Wolf Creek, last night. Shocker of a movie, if you want to be put off coming to Aus go rent it. Nice to see the killer played as a jolly, back slapping matey type, rather than an evil genius or supernatural being. Just your average, down to eart,h typical Aussie, relentless, unstopable, serial killing, sociopath in fact. (Though the “disturbed Vietnam Vet” angle was a bit cliché) It was based on two true stories, on these guys Bradley John Murdoch and Ivan Millat
Lee -Anne and Bethy got up at 4.30 am this morning to attend the “Anzac day Dawn Service”, they try to go every year. I didn’t go as I’m working today. They were both very moved by it, again, tears were shed.
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