Mystery Pub’s here/ Leigh Street babble, weekend blooms/ cold beer and cocktail
Murky bar innards/ stairway to heaven shut/ Perhaps next time, Jane
skinny legged man/ alone by a window sat/ wife sneaks fast photos
three chords from the youth/ Sorry, no Hot August Night/ Still, better than Pink
Spring sky smears up/ Friday city friendliness/ pub’s done; quick, home now.
Jeff the goat lived in Tiger Mountain State Forest near Seattle. He had a long, white, wispy beard and he played a guitar and sang.
Well, sort of.
When Jeff strummed his guitar and sang the bears and the cougars and even the fish in the streams would flee. He was truly, utterly, completely awful and the noise was like someone had thrown a bicycle into a nasty crushing machine.
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! Jeff played it again. He liked the sound of it. ‘Gee, I’m so good,’ Jeff said to himself.
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! Right then, two bears, four cougars and even the slowest fish in the Tiger Mountain State Forest fled.
Suddenly, Jeff stopped playing his guitar. He cleared his goaty throat and his long, white, wispy beard drifted about in the breeze. Turning to his goat-sister Peggy he declared in a squeaky, goaty voice, “I am going to Seattle to be a famous guitarist!”
Peggy’s goaty eyes widened. “Oh, no Jeff. You can’t go! Your home is here in Tiger Mountain State Forest.” A tear ran down her goaty face towards her long, white, wispy beard. Peggy gulped, “I’ll miss you. Please stay here with me.”
Jeff reared up onto his back two legs and in his squeaky goat voice he shouted, “I am going to be a famous guitarist, and no one can stop me. Especially not you Peggy!”
And with a huff Jeff the Goat scrambled away, his hooves click-clacking on the rocks.
He did not look back at his sister Peggy. Her long, wispy, white beard was drenched with tears.
The air was fresh, and the sun sent down golden shafts of warm light as Jeff trotted along the track. In the distance he heard a bear growl and Jeff shouted to the sky, “You don’t worry me Mr Bear for I’m going to Seattle to be a famous guitarist!” He laughed and lifted his goaty hooves higher and faster. Fame and fortune would soon be his!
Goat-scurrying along Jeff stopped by a sign and read it aloud. ‘Poo Poo Point Hiking Trail!’ His beard danced in the crisp mountain breeze. ‘I’m going the right way if I’m on Poo Poo Point Hiking Trail. I’m close.’
Over the trees Jeff saw a shiny tower stretching towards the clouds. ‘Yes,’ he yelled, ‘The Seattle Space Needle! I’ll play my guitar and sing to celebrate.”
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch!
The noise was so horrid that two sparrows flew away. They didn’t stop until they landed on the North Pole. Jeff didn’t hear them flap away as he was smiling at his own song. He trotted on.
Friday night in Seattle and cars honked their horns, and the neon lights blinked and shone.
Jeff the goat’s long, white, wispy beard quivered with excitement for in precisely twenty-eight minutes he’d be on Seattle’s Got Talent! He could taste the sweet taste of fame and fortune in his goaty mouth.
A voice boomed out. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Tiger Mountain State Forest, will you please give it up for Jeeeeeeeefffffffff the gooooooooaaaaaat!’
The curtains drew back. The lights burned into his beady, blinky, goaty eyes and Jeff knew he’d win.
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! Now, the crowd at Seattle’s Got Talent was generous and happy but even they had a limit. The windows exploded at the horrible noise.
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! The stage curtains blew away.
Twangy-bangy-bah-boo-burr-chomp-crunch! The lights went dark.
It was so truly, utterly, completely awful that the crowd couldn’t even boo. Jeff the guitar-playing goat was finished. He knew he wouldn’t enjoy fame and fortune.
Pushing open the back door of Seattle’s Got Talent, Jeff stepped into the drizzly alleyway.
‘Oh, Jeff,’ a goaty voice squeaked from beneath a streetlight. ‘Can I give you a hug?’
It was Peggy.
‘Oh, Peggy. I’m so sorry.’ Jeff put his hooves around his goat-sister. ‘I’ve made such a fool of myself, and I was horrible to you.’
Both their long, white, wispy beards were wet with rain and tears.
Peggy smiled at her brother. ‘It’s OK. Tiger Mountain State Forest and the bears, the cougars and even the fish have missed you. Let’s go home.’
During our annual Carrickalinga getaway I took some conscripts to parkrun at Myponga Reservoir, and I think we all enjoyed our ensemble endeavour. With water, stern hills, and forest it’s a fetching but searching physical test. Leonard rambled over the finish line and Claire and Trish then came down the final hill, legs whizzing not unlike the Tasmanian devil (Taz) in the Looney Tunes cartoons. It was a succession of warm moments across a brisk morning.
*
Cindy Lee is a Canadian band who’s come to recent global attention with their remarkable album Diamond Jubilee. It’s not on Spotify or vinyl but available as a single two-hour track on YouTube. Hypnotic and haunting, it evokes 1960’s girl groups and also features jangly guitars bouncing across its thirty-two songs. It put me in mind of buskers you might happen upon somewhere off-beat like Boise, Idaho.
*
Alain de Botton is an author I love to re-visit and this year he’s been in frequent demand. With Claire and I in an unbroken, anticipatory conversation about overseas trips, I was keen to purchase a book of his I’d previously appreciated. On level two of Adelaide’s Myer Centre is the most excellent Page and Turner, a sprawling second-hand bookstore and from here I bought The Art of Travel. The exquisitely observed prose possesses a deep, almost meditative fluency, and early in this work, he depicts the wonder of flight:
This morning the plane was over the Malay Peninsula, a phrase in which there lingers the smells of guava and sandalwood. And now, a few metres above the earth which it has avoided for so long, the plane appears motionless, its nose raised upwards, seeming to pause before its sixteen rear wheels meet the tarmac with a blast of smoke that makes manifest its speed and weight.
*
The glow from Glenelg’s SANFL victory continues. Given the ultimate margin of five points and with only one score in the final seven minutes, the tension was sustained at stratospheric levels. The sole behind came from Tiger forward Lachie Hosie hitting the post; itself among our game’s most theatrical events and a unique scoring outcome among world sports. Contrastingly, in rugby, soccer, and American football if a goal post is brushed, the ball’s destination is all that counts: inside the goal is good and deflected away means nothing. The notion of the behind as a reward for goal-kicking inaccuracy seems distinctly Australian and effectively announces, ‘That’s not a goal, but good effort. Here, have a point!’
*
Amidst the Carrickalinga escape, we spent a stout hour aboard the Yankalilla pub beer garden. This was an instructive text with the conversation moving from Asian and European travel to domestic matters. Returning to the holiday home, we’re welcomed by an array of aromatic curries which had been patiently preparing themselves in that most spiritually comforting of appliances: the slow cooker.
*
One Hand Clapping is a new Paul McCartney documentary I saw one Sunday with Max and his mate Ethan. It includes songs recorded in the Abbey Road studios for Band on the Run and we witness him playing the guitar, the bass, the piano, and singing in his honeyed, jubilant tenor. He appears ignorant of his own seemingly easy genius and captivating enthusiasm, and I was reminded of this: when his former band split, McCartney was devastated for more than anybody on the adoring planet, he loved the Beatles.
*
Alex and his school friend Judd camped in the Adelaide Hills to make a found-footage horror film for which Alex wrote an 8,000-word script. A chief challenge over the three days would be keeping phones and video cameras charged at their powerless camp site. I overheard Alex explaining how to solve this problem they would, ‘go to the pub for a schnitzel and plug in their devices there.’ First words, first steps, first day at school. Add to the accumulation of milestones: first pub schnitzel.
Friday afternoon and we’re strolling through the heart of the city — on the edge of the weekend, the edge of gentle possibility, and the edge of restoration.
Claire and I pass the infinitely charismatic Malls Balls and enter Rundle Street before making a sharp left at, but not into, the Exeter.
Claiming a corner booth, I glance outside and consider the Elephant is that rarest of boozers — it’s not on a street but a pedestrian lane. In contrast to my previous visit in July of 1997, it’s now bright and airy as opposed to somber and gloomy, presumably in former imitation of a Tottenham tavern.
That was just prior to the Ashes when Mark Taylor and his team thrashed England, again. Back then a group of Kapunda chaps engaged in a Wednesday ritual called Schnitzel Club during which we visited over one hundred and fifty pubs.
At that point, the England cricket team was sponsored by Tetley’s Bitter Beer and as a British boozer, the Elephant had it on tap. To heighten the pre-Ashes anticipation, we ordered one each.
How was it?
It was tepid like Tibooburra tap water and stank (tasted is too generous a verb) of late-capitalism collapse, murky Yorkshire moors and Thatcherite despair. It remains the worst beverage I’ve ever put in my (chiefly) undeserving gob.
Tonight, gladly, I’ve the immeasurably superior Coopers Pale Ale and my imperial pint is only $9. Claire has a white wine. We discuss the usual suspects — work, family and how Escape to the Country might later unfold (with the scarcely disguised disappointment of the house hunters, the host, or most likely, both).
There’s a lively (non-suit) crowd in and the atmosphere’s propulsive. A DJ is on the decks and doing a fine job. He plays an underappreciated track by The Beatles in ‘The Night Before’ before spinning Steely Dan’s ‘Do It Again’ with its decidedly cinematic opening and Arabesque atmospherics
In the mornin’ you go gunnin’ for the man who stole your water
And you fire till he is done in, but they catch you at the border
Fireball Fridays have arrived, so Claire buys one (it may have been a double, Your Honour) with a squelch of ginger beer. It’s whisky with hot, spicy cinnamon and accordingly, the late afternoon sun bends in through the ample windows. It’s an immediate hit.
Our Mystery Pub fare (ye olde fayre) is sausage rolls with fennel, and arancini balls. The plates come with three items, so having had one of each we agree to divide the remainder. Claire says, ‘Which one would you like?’ and I reply, ‘I think you know.’
And she does.
Concluding our second cups, we press out into the sparkling evening. Our weekend’s underway.
We talk about it every now and then. How, before mobile phones we’d make an arrangement with somebody and just have to stick to it.
‘Meet me at the Malls Balls at noon.’
Done.
‘See you tonight at the pub.’
Sorted.
Technology now allows us to break these agreements. Some might say mobile phones encourage rudeness. Or maybe they’ve made us more responsive to life’s twitchy demands. Is constant communication healthy? The social landscape has shifted.
*
‘I’ll meet you at the finish line,’ I said to Claire.
‘About 9,’ she confirmed.
It was the morning of the City Bay Fun Run. Same as the year before, we’d a plan. Claire would be easy to spot in her pink jacket. I also liked to think that there’d be some mysterious, undeniable connection, a marital telepathy that would bring us together, despite the swarm of 25,000 runners and their innumerable hangers-on.
Exhausted, ruddy of cheek, and hands on hips, I was funnelled along Colley Terrace, peering about, trying to spot the pink jacket.
Where was she? Maybe over by the roundabout. No, she wasn’t.
Continuing to the race village in Wigley Reserve, I hunted among the marquees and food trucks and bibbed joggers. No luck. Back to the finish line. Same. No pink jacket.
What to do? That’s it! I’d borrow a stranger’s phone to ring Claire.
5AA had a MC at the music stage, and away he honked. He was pleased with himself and pleased with his voice. ‘Well done to all the participants. It’s been a great morning. Up soon we’ve got the Flaming Sambuccas who are going to play for you…’
I wondered if he might help me, but he barely drew breath, so I walked off.
A safety of blue-uniformed police officers (nice collective noun) stood at a display, chatting among themselves. Approaching an officer I said, ‘Hello there. Hoping you can help me…’
Now, we don’t usually need to remember phone numbers. Who knows anybody’s number, beyond their own? It’s a redundant skill. How would I call her?
On the friendly officer’s phone, I pressed the buttons. How had I memorised the number?
Claire’s the holder of the Dan Murphy’s membership and if I pop in late Saturday morning (as I sometimes like to do) the cashier will say, ‘Do you have a membership?’ to which I reply, ‘Yes, I do’ and then I recite Claire’s phone number.
I’ve now heard myself say this dozens of times; just like my Grade 5 class learnt by heart, ‘Mulga Bill’s Bicycle.’ There’s an everyday intimacy in it and it’s a little prayer. And what better place for this oration than Dan’s?
Shortly after, heading towards me I saw a pink jacket.
*
Later Sunday I was at Adelaide Oval, while Claire attended day two of a conference at the convention centre on North Terrace.
The Tigers and Dogs were in a close one and I moved restlessly around the ground trying inanely to escape the foghorn chant. ‘U Dogs! U Dogs!’
Just after half time Claire called to say that her phone was about to die. What to do? We’d planned to head home together. Ordinarily, we’d sort this much later.
So, again we made an arrangement. Two hours before hand! Then followed two hours during which we had no contact! I watched the footy and Claire did conference things at the conference.
It seemed pioneering and almost dangerous. But there we were in this psychological uncertainty, both adrift, both untethered. Miraculously, we just went about our afternoons. It was thrilling and magical.
We’d decided on a time and place to meet and after a gap of a few hours, we were going to have to honour it. Just like it was 1987 and we were meeting at the Malls Balls before going to Brashs to buy an Uncanny X-Men CD.
Leaving the footy a few minutes early, with Glenelg off to the grand final, I made my way over the sunlit footbridge, up through the majestic railway station, across North Terrace and into the Strathmore Hotel.
Just as planned, Claire was there. Sitting on a stool, smiling, with an espresso martini in hand.
mickeytales 