Americans abroad

The fleet was in. There were sailors everywhere. Drunken. Letting off steam.
Some 5000 US marines were on R&R in the northern city of Darwin - and of course one got to speak to a few of them. They told me what a good leader was George Bush, winning a war. "We won a war. We kicked ass," they said. Not that these lads had seen action. But they were pumped up with the idea of it and ready to go anywhere to kick more ass. They said they were better prepared for it than the last lot - those ones with Gulf War syndrome. In fact there is no such thing, they said. Just weak men. Weak babyboomers. Pussycats who had had it soft and were not ready for anything tough. Couldn't take it. Just like those weak babyboomers in the Vietnam war.

Now I am all for toughening up servicemen - but filling them full of this sort of disrespectful propaganda is really beyond the pale.

More long distance stress

This is absurd. I am 12,000 miles away - and yet I am absolutely wired waiting for the NH Primary vote.

Hitting the hills

It is ages and aeons since I have been to the Hills. But a cute little Megane test car and word that my favorite seaweed soap may be found in Hahndorf seemed like reason enough for a run up the prettiest of motorways too the little tourist haven German town. I don't know why people want to knock Hahndorf for being German touristy. That's the whole point. One never knows when a bratwurst and saukraut may take one's fancy. And there were the people, having their steins of beer at the umbrella pavement tables. And the wee shops full of knits and weaves, leather, crystals, soaps, gemstones and cakes, cakes, cakes. Rex and I strolled the length of the town, meeting Lita and her gentleman friend Surindra in his new upmarket Indian store. My soap I did not find, although I found many fine hand-made soaps and I bought some honey furniture polish...and we wended our way through the winding and summery Hills roads, lined with blooming cannas and agapanthus, past orchards and villages, to a new weekend market in an old woolens factory. Goat cheeses and olives, berries and oils, women with spinning wheels, more soaps and bags and crafts. We had coffee and a light, late lunch in this pleasant ambience and then hummed along more pastoral roads, stopping at a roadstand to buy kilos of juicy black cherries fresh from the trees, and apples and honey and newly-baked apple cake...
And we figured that maybe we would not leave it quite so long before we headed for them thar Hills again.

NH stressout

Of course I couldn't see the Iowa Caucus on the office cable - because the blokes wanted to see the tennis. No one is too bothered by the dramas of American politics - not when there is sport going on.
But CNN served me well with its poll table and I kept up to the moment right there on the computer. So glad to see the back of Gephardt. So astonished to see the demise of Dean. Where were the Deaniebabies? Apparently few of them turned out to rally the forces to the Caucus - and then Dean lost the plot. Like everyone else, I continue to ponder the aberration of that victory speech.
Now the action is back in NH - where Clark has lost some kudos with his patronising snipe at Kerry, a fellow veteran. Inappropriate.
Kerry looks presidential - but will the Mass man make it in the south? That is the question. B has put his money on Edwards - and, indeed, Edwards has been running a very focused and intelligent campaign. I won't cry if he wins.

Impatient as hell

The Democrat Presidential Primaries are neck-and-neck in Iowa and I am so desperately impatient to know the outcome. Not as impatient as the candidates, I daresay.
Then there is New Hampshire where the outcome, I suspect, will be different. And then on through the states. An interesting and extended process. I can't imagine how the candidates cope with the demands of such protracted campaigning. I hear that Clark's voice is going as he leaps from stump to stump in NH. And that having endorsed him, Michael Moore has been up there appearing with him. B attended that meeting and describes the immense buzz in the packed school stadium. He sent photos among which was one of the media OB vans outside the meeting, parked in the thick snow. This was fascinating for, as I was looking at this on Sunday morning in Australia, I also was watching Fox live from the US - showing the very footage taken from that very OB crew in NH. And I was struck by the miracle of modern communications. Not for the first time. It constantly blows me away that our world is now thus connected. If only the world could find, in these instant and wonderous communications, a like mind in the name of love and peace.

Out to launch

We had the launch for Womadelaide in Botanic Gardens. Perfect sunny day - in the shade of towering trees with magpies doing elegant swooping fly-bys, lorikeets twittering in packs and huge, vivid rosellas chattering from aloft. Even the odd crow came to check out the gathered crowd. As the speakers droned on, a sequence of rather lovely girls in black magically materialised from the shrubbery carrying platters of the most exquisite finger-food - olivebread with roasted aubergine and soft goat cheese, mini bloody marys with scampi, cheese and rice balls dipped in tomato salsa, fragrant cold rolls...
It omened beautifully for the best of musical experiences. I will ever love Womad.

Cannibal politics

Fox finally has been showing an interest in the Democrat Presidential Primaries. Why? Because they have an opening for a negative slant. So now they preen and glint with pleasure, revelling in the Democrat white-anting of Howard Dean. Everyone is gunning for Dean. It's time to lop the tallest poppy. Gephardt has been at it from the outset - for which attitude he lost my respect early in the piece. Kerry has been at it and it has done him harm. The only one who is standing apart and not attacking one of his own kind is Wes Clark. And he grows in stature in my eye.

A private airport

A dream or a nightmare? I am not sure. But my study certainly has become an "internet cafe" as threatened. Tonight there were four mac laptops and my old PC all humming away - along with their accompanying users, of course. A hive of downloading and installations. Rather a jolly group, all told. Students and writers. Of course it was a mac event. The PC, the only desktop, was my retreat since my mac was busy getting some new applications. I had some chatting and surfing to do - and some quiet comparisons, if truth be known. I now loathe this PC keyboard, although I am not altogether comfortable on the wee flat thing on the laptop. But I am old school. No soft flat-handed finger-patting of the keys. I hit the keys - because I typed before I keyboarded. I typed on thumping, great antique newsroom typewriters - those old Underwoods with white keys. What with the heavy nature of the machines and the need to imprint through three layers of carbons, a strong stroke was needed on each key and a firm arm to whack the carriage return. Those were the days. No one got RSI. They got exercise. And newsrooms were full of the clack-a-clack of many reporters hammering out stories, phones ringing and voices shouting "Copy". Oh yes, and those chutes which zapped the copy through to the compositors - whooosh. How different are newsrooms today - quiet keyboard pattering, subdued voices on phones. No copy boys or chutes. The copy reaches its destination with a touch of the return key.
And no coils of smoke from ashtrays on all the desks.
But there is just as much paper piled all over the place, even if the old spikes have been banned. Apparently they suddenly became dangerous. They were removed because we might hurt ourselves - after scores of year. A work hazard. What a joke. Work Safety makes children of us all.

What a lovely day. It's a perfect "Adelaide" day - temperature in the 30s, air clean and dry, sky a vastness of pristine blue. As I look out the window mid-afternoon, there are but one or two cars in the city streets - double the number to be seen this morning when the city was in somnulent stillness - apart from the occasional stumbling merriment of young people perchance on the way home from the "recovery' parties after the big night.
A nice night it was, too. With Peter I cruised into the city and perused the Lord Mayor's NY Eve street party - the main drag a scene of tables and chairs and food stands, families strolling and eating or watching the live entertainment. Very busy but very laid-back.
We were en route to Stormy's, paying an early visit to her NY Eve party. Stormy is the city's famous brothel madam and a thoroughly good spirit. She lives in a luxurious penthouse over the shop, so to speak. We took the lift from the mirrored corridor and found ourselves in the brothel reception area. Stormy had not yet set the lift to go up to her private quarters. Very plush and fastidious is the brothel - reflective of Stormy's Dutch background, perhaps. We had a soft drink and jolly conversations with Stormy and her new husband, plus a few early guests before heading off to the official party of the night, hosted by the city's most legendary drag queen, Roger aka Rouge. He was not in drag and nor were the others. It was a relaxed social event for friends of all ilks - and a gregarious and easy-going lot they were. Show tunes playing, the odd person getting up and dancing a stunning routine before sitting down and picking up the drink again. Food flowing from all directions, an accomplished young chef in the kitchen cooking up an endless storm of elegant fare. His cakes table was groaning with elegant indulgences. No empty tummies at this party. Quite the opposite. We were presented with a plate piled high with cakes and tarts when we announced we had to leave before midnight and, thus furnished, we arrived at my mother's to have our micro NY Eve party - just the three of us. I poured us Quandong fortified wine on ice and set out anchovy stuffed olives, fresh pretzels and sweet potato crisps and we settled in to watch the Sydney Harbour Bridge fireworks on TV and toast each other for the new year. Sam, DJing a NY Eve party at the city club, managed to phone a minute after the mignight chime. He never forgets his dependent grandmother, not for a minute.
I chatted on for an hour or so and then drifted off to bed, ready to begin the new year at work.

Sea change....the big move

I have a Mac.
I have made the brave move.
Learning curve. After 20 plus years on PCs.

Being Out of Town

The speed of modern communications has not caught up with everywhere...of course. So here we are in the country with the slowest connection in the world, perhaps. Email takes hours to come in and one curses the endless spam which no longer is grabbed by the ISP or the secondary filter. it just comes and comes and comes....and comes. Right now I am waiting for 300 mails to come in.
Commuting from the country is a bit of a bore, too. I know Americans commute for hours every day and I should not complain. It is only an hour and a quarter from here - and when no one else is on the country stretches of the road, it is actually rather lovely. But then one hits the traffic and the last 40 klicks are vile.
These are the last days, however. And this the last weekend. The packing weekend when I prepare the house for its summer holiday tenants, the revenue which is supposed to pay the rates.
A lovely day today with friends B & Q staying - sharing pleasures in nature. We spotted a white-breasted sea eagle on the island this morning and had a lengthy good look at her through the high-powered scope. And then on Seal Island a mother seal and her baby - almost white, the bub. And paddling in the rock pools with the tide out, we found a wonderful crustacean worm creature and a happy crab, as well as lots of tiny hatchling fish. Later, at Waitpinga, we did some fly herding and Q caught some of the herded flies for identification under Bruce's powerful hand-magnifier. And we sat on the glorious beach in the perfect warmth and watched the Caspian terns and Pac gulls and silver gulls, and the seven fishermen in the distance, casting into the surf. And on the way home, Q pointed out masses of butterflies and we stopped to watch them, and found also a huge red ant busy on a gum bough and some tiny orb-weavers. And then, as we drove on, B spotted a huge bearded lizard displaying himself on a dead tree....oh yes, we saw kangaroos, too.
In the evening, after a huge dinner, we drove to look at the Xmas lights of Victor - and then generally repaired to rest. The boys had erected my long-awaited shed today. it now sits green and proud in the corner. Tomorrow I will start putting things in it.
But now - there are more of the masssss of short stories to be read for the paper's short-story competition. I have been reading hundreds a day, charmed to the core to think of all those people intent on the business of creative writing, even if a lot of them are immersed in the most lurid of purple prose.
Onwards to bed, to stack the folder on the knee and sit up, pen in hand, judging the good from the bad...sometimes pausing to marvel at a competitor, for often their descriptions of themselves are the most fascinating part.

Critical condition

What a roll-up. Guests and nominees for the Critics Circle Awards night were rolling up 40 minutes before the invitation hour - which caught us somewhat on the hop setting things up in the Bakehouse Theatre. First to arrive was a theatre director and hot on her heels, our Lifetime Achiever, an octogenarian Czech former ballerina. And then in they swarmed, waiting at the bar before the wine was even opened. And they swilled down the fine Coriole wines and sucked down the Coopers beers and they nibbled and chomped on the food - by the end of the evening polishing off all the wine and all the food, leaving only some of the beer with which to "pay" the volunteer bar staff and glass-washers. But it was one helluva good party - and people lingered on to the last. Winners, of course, swanned out on clouds with trophies and cheques in hand, beaming from ear to ear. And once again we, the critics, had the satisfaction of rewarding the best of the best - not only with the material goods but with the kudos which forever after they may put as a major credit achieved. "Award-winning" is a nice way to prefix one's name.
It was a terrific crowd - a delight to address. So responsive. It made it easy for all of us who had to speak - and we were many. I MCed and assorted critics made the announcements of winners, speaking on their merits as they did so. Our VIP politician, John Hill, known under the silly title as "Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts" (we all believe he should be given the title of arts minister since he is beloved in the arts and the premier perhaps less so) was witty and wonderful.
And the audience, in the air-conditioned theatre, was able to sit comfortably, drinks in hand, throughout the speaking and award-giving. Our sponsor for the Coopers awards for amateur theatre, Glenn Cooper, rolled up in the nick of time and in the sweetest of good humor. He has no aptitude for any of the arts, said he, but he supports the awards because he loves the arts and most particularly the people involved in them. It was heartfelt - and we all purred with pleasure.
Our Arts Department friends were there, of course. For it is they who liaise the serious money for the major professional awards. And they seemed warm and happy with the event, too. Indeed, everyone seemed radiantly happy. And - after a frenetic day of getting the event together, I retire to bed absolutely and utterly exhausted - but pleased as punch that another year's awards are successfully under the belt.

Deja revue

Another reunion? Well, at least it was not brutally time-specific. It spanned several decades - the lifetime of the University Footlights Club, the home of undergraduate satire. A sad reflection on Generation X et al is the death of such pertinent creative juices. Footlights has been dead since the 80s with students now simply too preoccupied with studies to indulge in satiric thespian tendencies. Not so in my day when those revues were big deal - and not just for the student body.
Tonight 210 old Footlighters gathered to reminisce and run, rustily, through some of the old numbers of the 50s and 60s.
Exuberant, bright youth now in middle age and, in some cases, dotage - since the first Footlighters were performing in the 30s and 40s. A room crowded with extroverts!
It was good to see many of the faces of my uni days. Strange, though, that despite the intervening years, they still looked much the same to me. I gazed at some, silver-haired or balding, and succumbed to that strange backflash of the vibrant, zealous student days and the excitement of putting on the shows and partying through the nights - never in wildest youthful imaginings contemplating a day in the distant future when we would converge to reminisce about those good old days. We did not think a lot about the future then. We could not see ourselves in mellow years. The "now" was forever. Halcyon youth.

Away from the madding crowd

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside. Especially this, my own corner of the seaside - with its old glacial reef and its seascape of rocky islands and the mighty Bluff. Encounter Bay, where the scent of the sea invigorates and renews as the tide goes out exposing the rocky reef and its weedy life forms - beds of mussels, urchins, weed like strings of pearls, ribbons of kelp, starfish...
Bruce and I are having a wee retreat. I have a week off work and he is over from NH on his annual leave. Precious time for us both. In our own house with its sublime view, the sea a casual stone's throw from the door.
It's been a quiet few days - just us. We have walked our familiar path to the old screwpile jetty to watch the fishermen, we have sat on beaches watching the sea, on the little calm, sheltered bay beneath the bluff and also on the mighty Waitpinga beach where the Southern Ocean crashes wild surfing waves onto the vast stretch of golden sand. Looking at that sand under one of B's high-powered magnifiers (which he carries around the neck on nature walks) it was to find a world of glittering, sea-smoothed gemstones - tiny golden quartz, which gives the sand its color, and pure crystal quartz like miniature uncut diamonds.
It was a breezy day when we walked Waitpinga. Only us and two fishermen casting into the furious sea. The waves were massive, raging over in rolling breaks and frothing up like seething meringue. Down the profile of the coast, the perspective of headlands was cast into pastel hues by the delicate salt spray whipped up from the wind off the sea. B and I, after padding through the soft sand to the little rivermouth, headed inland along the edge of the river - which, after the drought, was narrowed leaving broad, firm beds of sandy marsh mud. Opportunistic little wildflowers were greedily spreading their way across the new soil, rejoicing with bright blue blooms. As we walked the water's edge, we noticed masses of little marsh flies flying in little leaps and bounds around our feet. The further we walked, the more of these little ground-dwelling flies we saw until they were a dense black carpet. We were fascinated by the way their population seemed to grow thicker the further inland we walked - until I turned around and observed that there were hardly any little flies behind us. They were keeping pace with us, a step ahead all the way. We were herding them. Fly herding!!!!!! And we had herded them by the zillions. Oh the power.
Our friends, Barb and Brian, came down yesterday and we rolled off for an Aussie pub meal. Hearty and very average - but easy and fun. Today we lunched at the Miniature Vilalge tearooms amid its wonderful rose and native garden - watching birds feeding their young in nests under the eaves of the verandah. Blue wrens, swallows, honeyeaters.... And we had merriment with Eric, the corella, who says "hello Eric" and performs tricks of dropping rocks with his claw and catching them with his beak. Clever bird.
Later B and I drove to explore a native flower garden I had noticed from the road (it's good to be a passenger sometimes) - and what a joy this 5-acre native garden. Nangawooka I think is its name. A serene place with 2500 different sorts of Australian native plant - and the accompanying birdlife - more blue wrens, galahs, sulphur cresteds, wattle birds, crested doves...a wonderous racket of birdsong amid the sweet fragrance of vegetation. There was no one else in the reserve - just B and me, wandering unurriedly, marvelling at the primeval nature of some of the plants, rolling their names around on our tonges - Grevillia, leucospurum, callistemon...
Reading in the window seats, watching the ever changing hues of the sea, waking to the first peek of the orange sun on the horizon (and then going back to sleep), walking to the boat ramp and watching the pelicans, seagulls and terns on their rocks...
Oh and we had a storm...a wild electrical storm which raged all night long. Not much rain, of course. Lightning and more lightning, illuminating the sea and islands in stark relief. Just before sunset, the sun made a last appearance and an incredible rainbow emerged almost vertically beside Wright Island. So deep and rich in its colors. The full arc was massive when we went outside to check its extent. And then a second rainbow twinned the first in softer colors. We stood on the balcony gazing in wonderment - and then the most spectacular coiling, curling, bright and extensive lightning struck right through the core of the rainbows. Talk about gasp! Oh yes, we gasped. What a phenomenon.
Ain't nature grand!