Category Archives: travel

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Songs of Sparkling Shiraz

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 CT

Just before her weekly massage Catriona Rowntree eyes the camera coquettishly.

The Getaway audience is transfixed. Where’s tonight’s rubdown? Fiji? Ah, lovely.

But it’s about her voice. A voice, some would suggest, belonging to the blissful space between sleep and waking.

Like Catriona in her fluffy bathrobe, sparkling shiraz is also distinctly Australian.

No matter that the rest of the planet views it like a toasted cheese sandwich in India.

*

October long weekends. Our throng stayed two hours’ north of Adelaide at the Clare Country Club. We’d observe an annual routine.

Golf. Dinner at Bentley’s hotel. Golf. Watching the SANFL Grand Final in the Watervale pub (another Port flag). Golf. The Magpie and Stump in drowsy Mintaro, where I first heard a publican inquire, “Another cup of tea vicar?”

The Clare Dragon Chinese restaurant where the crankiest person in the world would serve us: Colleen. Every year she’d mutter, “Well I won’t be here next time you visit. This is driving me mad. I can’t stand it.”

And come next October Colleen’d deliver these same lines like a poem. A poem performed by the cantankerous employee of a regional Chinese eatery.

There’d also be a winery tour. One stormy Sunday we coasted into the Wilson Vineyard near Polish Hill River. At the counter, we began our work with Freddie Flintoff gusto.

A single sip. The subterranean purple hue, the mesmerizing flavor, the sassiness. It was dangerous fun. It was a sparkling shiraz. It was called Hippocrene. I was enthralled.

Poets can be fibbers, but I reckon John Keats got it right in “Ode to a Nightingale”

O for a beaker full of the warm South
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim

Tellingly, the parents-in-law smuggled a bottle into England for us to share on my birthday. If a Google map showed who was drinking what across Europe, then we were likely the only sparkling shiraz slurpers. I didn’t care.

Hippocrene was an occasion wine. Sometimes it’d be Christmas. Sometimes the occasion would be Sunday. We only ever had two or three bottles a year, so at the easing of the cork there was always frisson.

Like the Greek civilisation from which it inherited its name, one October the cellar door assistant announced that Hippocrene was no more. “Have you any left?” I begged. Out the back were a few bottles of the ’96. We bought half a dozen.

And then it was gone.

*

The Black Chook

This can open the batting at your barbeque. Unlike Watto, it doesn’t plonk down a dumb left pad and get struck plumb. More like Boof, it’s good for a chirpy thirty.

Surprisingly sturdy, it boasts drinkable complexity. And it receives extra points for having the word “chook” in its name.

The Black Chook’s about $18 in Australia, or approaching a hundred bucks and two months’ national service in Singapore.

The Black Queen

A tremendous wine by the late Barossan, Peter Lehmann.

We’d been to Kapunda to climb over and in and on Leo the Train at the Hill Street playground. We’d luncheoned at Masters’ bakery on the main street, helpfully named Main Street. As Dr Evil might say, “Try the sausage rolls. They’re breathtaking.”

Heading home I thought I’d buy a bottle of sparkling shiraz. So I said to myself, “Self. Why not actually call into Peter Lehmann’s winery on the way through Tanunda?”

Rather than going to a liquor chain this seemed a retro, fun thing to do. Not so much slaughtering a cow because you fancy a hamburger, but more like listening to Revolver on vinyl.

A profound, exotic gargle, the Black Queen is about $40 in Australia, or the price of an inner-city apartment here on the tip of Malaysia.

Andrew Garrett Sparkling Shiraz

Like a glass of agitated Ribena®. You’d be better off with a wine made by Midnight Oil warbler, Peter Garrett.

Andrew Garrett once tried to sue Westpac for- raise your little finger to the corner of your mouth- eleven billion dollars. I’m less chance to drink this again.

Bleasdale Sparkling Shiraz

Here’s a confession. Langhorne Creek’s an hour south of Adelaide, but it was only three years ago that I first visited. For me, that’s the oenological equal of never having heard 16 Lovers Lane by The Go-Betweens. The Bridge Hotel serves lunch, and you can sit outside, under the obliging gums, with a Coopers Pale Ale.

It’s parched and dusty, but the vines often enjoy winter flooding from the Bremer River. Bleasdale Sparkling Shiraz reminds me of writer and Exeter Hotel inhabiter, Philip White.

When the Advertiser was still a newspaper, he penned a column called Drinks. White once described a wine, I think a Greenock Creek, as being “full of iron and steel, and women and children.” Obviously, this also summarises the Bleasdale.

A snip at $20 for Tony’s Team Australia, or if you’re from the Republic of Singapore, similar coin to a luxury holiday on Koh Samui.

*

Sparkling shiraz is the viticultural Skyhooks. Unheard of in Europe. Never caught on in America. Yet enduringly significant and loved in Australia.

For a certain demographic, both provide a cracking soundtrack to backyard barbies.

As the creator of pastoral poetry, and Deniliquin Ute Muster fan Theocritus said, “Now give me goat and cup.”

skyhooks

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Hertfordshire: Harry Potter and the Cheeky Half Pint

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Ling

In St Albans I thought about two of its celebrated citizens, Benny Hill and Stephen Hawking.

Yeah, you got me. Just Benny Hill.

Colonised by the Romans, who called it Verulamium, it’s just north of London. It’s pretty and historic. When we lived there it had eighty pubs.

*

On the way to Watford is the Warner Brothers studio tour. Once the decade of filming Harry Potter wrapped, someone gasped at the tracts of wizardy robes, giant spiders and the Great Hall, and murmured, “What will we do with all this lot?” In the first week of January, we found out.

Alex and Max loved the blue screen experience. Their Flying Ford Anglia zipped high above the Scottish countryside, and their racing broomstick swooped low over the Thames. As a mate noted,

Nothing is better named than the Nimbus 2000.

An enormous challenge was the Quidditch scenes. These were filmed with skydiving, industrial fans and Russian swings launching body doubles like bungy jump mishaps. I’m staggered by the collective imagination.

An inanimate star of the franchise is the huge model of Hogwarts Castle. When the time spent designing and building is totalled, it took seventy-four years to construct. That’s even longer than watching all of St Kilda’s footy trip highlights!

Lastly, of course, you are cast adrift in an oceanic gift shop, reminding you that while this is fun, it’s primarily commerce. As the mortgage is finalised on two wands and a Gryffindor scarf, I spot a man in the kit of the previously secret, fifth Hogwarts house, Fremantle.

The purple haze of the Dockers? Here, in this magical kingdom of spells and free-flowing football? As Hagrid would attest, the Geelong hoops are distinctly Hogwarts. After all, who didn’t love Cameron Ling’s performance as pureblood wizard Ron Weasley?

*

cocks

One of my favourite patches on the planet fits on an Adelaide oval or two. Our tour begins at St Albans Cathedral, which is 551 feet along its immense and picturesque nave.

Alban earned his sainthood by sheltering and then substituting himself for a local priest. It was a Roman version of the Fine Cotton affair. Unlike the horse, which lived to the impressive age of thirty-two, Alban was beheaded.

Expertly detached, his noggin started a-rolling, and moving appreciably from leg to off, bounced to the bottom of the hill. At this spot, legend suggests, a well instantly began gushing, and is named Holywell.

Surrounding both the former monastery and Roman city is one hundred acres of gorgeous expanse, Verulamium Park. When the first shafts of pale spring sunshine coax the temperature into double digits, cider-guzzling locals strip down to their waists, and hoof soccer balls about with splendid inaccuracy.

The concluding locale in our painterly excursion is the Ye Olde Fighting Cocks. Built in 793AD, it’s England’s oldest pub. It’s superb.

As an Australian Rules footballer I was a rover. Sorry, kids, that’s a primeval term for midfielder. So low is the pub ceiling that about a thousand years ago, if I was picked for the Verulamium Caesars, in the derby against the Londinium Scurvy Knaves, I obviously would’ve rucked.

I used to love walking in there, proudly but pointlessly ducking my head, and pretending I was Shaun Rehn, minus the knee braces. And this, before I’ve even had a beer, is every pub’s function: to help us feel unrealistically good.

With exposed beams, snug nooks and an enticing lunch menu, it’s like we never left. The boys sit by the dancing fire. There’s the Belgian strawberry beer, Fruili, to which Kerry utters, “Yum.”

Trickling by the pub and the ornamental lake is the diminutive River Ver. An energetic hour in the tavern means even from a stationary start, and into a breeze, most males would carry it comfortably.

But cathedral, park and pub make an exquisite spot and now, exploring with our boys, it still is.

*

Inside the abbey we lit votive candles at the tomb of St Alban. Max immediately told Alex what he’d asked for. And vice versa. As kids do. Their innocence contrasted with the entrance’s Thatcherite ultimatum,

Your four-pound donation (each) ensures the upkeep of the cathedral.

Since the ninth century a cobblestoned square has hosted twice-weekly markets, offering fish, meat, olives and much else. Beyond the kaleidoscopic colour and movement, and sausage and beef wafts from Charlie O’Brien’s butchery, its soundtrack is bustling fun.

“Pound a bowl,” bellow the greengrocers. We’d often buy a bowl, and later home in the kitchen, wonder at its catholic contents: parsnip, carrot, ear of corn (no eye of newt or toe of frog).

The spruikers are still there, with voices rumbling about the fourteenth century clock tower, sounding like jauntier versions of Ray Winstone,

Get me the money for those potatoes by Wednesday, or you’ve got yourself a little problem. Me.

*

Who could resist visiting the house they lived in a decade before? Taking a left off Holywell Hill, the Peugeot halts, and I turn down XFM. Why, it’s tiny! Wasn’t it bigger? How has our world again shrunk?

I stole down the path, and looked over the gate like a burglar in a telemovie. The scruffy hedges have been replaced with charmless, pine fences. Also gone is the shed, in front of which, during warm mornings, our precious, now departed terrier Roxy would sun her honeyed fur.

Why are we always disappointed when cherished spaces change, even for the better? We walk under the barren tree. I put Alex and Max in the car, and drive away.

*

After twenty days in Europe, we make our glutinous, anticlockwise way around the M25, towards Heathrow. Farewelling the icy winds and trains and ancient cityscapes, our A-380 soars to Dubai.

Then, we skim down to the equator, and Singapore, in its muggy summer.

ron

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Football in London: Who took the jam outta your doughnut?

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BTT

At the football I thought about Vinnie Jones.

A midfielder, his first club was semi-professional Wealdstone, in North London. Moving to Wimbledon, they won the 1988 FA Cup.

His Guy Ritchie film phase followed, including Snatch, in which he played Bullet-Tooth Tony. Becoming president of the Hertfordshire Agricultural Society in 2005, Vinnie showed what a community-minded fellow he is. Just like Bullet-Tooth.

Glancing about the ground I don’t see anyone likely to be in cinematic demand as an underworld thug. At least, not on the pitch.

I’m at Wealdstone on the first Sunday of the year, for their Conference South clash. Floodlight mingles with the fog. I’m on the terrace with Barry.

Hemel Hempstead is known as the Tudors. Their city’s famous for an infrastructural oddity, the Magic Roundabout, and Roger Moore, universally acclaimed as the fifth best James Bond.

I last saw Barry in 2008, and he’s now married with a son. He befriended me when we moved to St Albans, and after work on my first Friday he took me to the Bunch of Cherries. He sees you as you’d like to be seen. Spending time with him makes me buoyant. It’s his gift.

We slip into our comfortable way of yakking, and turn to sport. “I don’t love football,” Barry reveals at kickoff, “But I love Wealdstone. I don’t care about the Premier League.”

*

For the final game of 2004/5 we travelled to Salisbury in Wiltshire. Pausing for lunch at The George Inn in Middle Wallop, we failed entirely to acknowledge that a BBC adaptation of Miss Marple was filmed locally.

Nearby are the villages of Over Wallop and Nether Wallop. I’m reminded of Lower Slaughter and Upper Slaughter in the Cotswolds. The rural counties promise abundant violence.

From the football I see Salisbury Cathedral’s 404-foot spire, which has attracted travellers since its completion in 1320. But our pilgrimage is one of simmering anxiety. The locals are teased

I can’t read and I can’t write

But that don’t really matt-er

‘Cause I’m from Salis-bury

And I can drive my trac-tor.

Wealdstone was walloped 3-1, although the perilously late goal meant they evaded relegation. As a life event it ranks highly for Barry, and the next day he texted (repeatedly) as if in thankful, blunt prayer

one effing goal

*

During the last World Cup qualifiers, Ireland played Kazakhstan in Astana, and won 2-1. Over 12,000 attended. Forty-seven away tickets were sold, and as a zealous Irishman, Barry’s brother Shawn was among them.

Today, Wealdstone FC looks to be in Kazakhstan. Like Warnie tutoring three buxom nurses, Hemel Hempstead threatens bedlam. 1-0. The keeper alone stops it becoming catastrophic. “He’s good,” I offer. My feet are torpidly cold, and could undergo major surgery, without anaesthetic.

Barry says. “He used to be the Under 21 keeper for Wales.”

“Impressive,” I observe.

“ Yeah,” Barry qualifies, “but the second choice was a sheep.”

*

There are two types of football fans. Those who sit, and those like me, who stand. It’s my country upbringing. Boofy clumps of men standing on the wing, bantering like goats, and bellowing at the opposition, their supporters, and the umpire. This, vicar, is how the congregation behaves.

At work I flop into a chair constantly, but will stand at the football all day. Conversation is easier. Hanging stuff on your Port Power mate about his dental status is harder if you’re squeezed into a row next to Nanna and her tartan thermos.

As ball sponsors we enjoy boardroom hospitality. There’s coffee and sausage rolls at halftime. Roast beef, winter vegetables and Yorkshire pudding after the match. It’s better than a Famous Five picnic. Someone within the club prepared it, and not an external caterer. I can tell.

This connects to cricket in the Barossa. Surrounded by vines sagging with fruit bound for Dutschke Wines up on Gods Hill Road, the Lyndoch Cricket Club always provided an afternoon tea of egg sandwiches and refreshments. It invested those days with graciousness. As a young uni student from Kapunda I probably needed help in this.

*

On the frozen terrace there’s a haiku-like economy in the way Barry and his friends talk. Together, they’ve had countless Wealdstone moments. They’ve no need for elaboration, but I hear warmth in their words. Football’s only part of their pact.

“Take the Metropolitan Line,” suggests pub DJ Chris when I say my digs are near (not in) the Tower of London. I love the passion Londoners have for the Tube. Apart from the Womma station, Adelaideans care little for their transport. “Yeah, but make sure it’s an Aldgate train,” clarifies Barry.

The Underground is London’s cardiovascular system, and its lexicon is evocative. Hammersmith & City. Bakerloo. Jubilee. “Don’t get caught in Tottenham Court Station,” is the final tip. “It’s shut ‘til next Christmas.”

Unlike Henry VIII, the Tudors don’t execute cleanly in front of goal. Wealdstone dominates possession, but is timid in attack. Coming from behind twice, 2-2 ensures they’re undefeated in their last ten outings. However, they’re precariously close to the drop zone.

With the whistle Wealdstone exits the pitch to hearty applause. I’m not sure if it’s ironic, daggy or great, but Pilot’s “January” then bursts into the fog

January
sick and tired you’ve been hanging on me
you make me sad with your eyes
you’re telling me lies
don’t go
don’t go
January
don’t be cold

As my train speeds south I see Wembley and its colossal arch. In the dark western sky it’s a cathedral. It’d be tremendous to take Alex and Max there, but I’ve had myself an afternoon at a tiny match, which matters only to a few hundred devoted folk.

Besides, I doubt Wembley offers home-cooked roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Wembly

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London: Good Service on the Piccadilly Line

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London Eye

In London I thought about Margaret Thatcher. I didn’t wish to.

Our hotel lift was of the talking variety, and in the awful, condescending vowels of the late baroness, it’d declare things like

“Going down.”

“Doors closing.”

“I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.”

That last one was a shock, especially when the lift then scolded me. “You. Yes, you. Colonial man. You’ve been a disappointment to so many, many people.”

*

Slung from the Eurostar, we got into a black cab outside St Pancras. It was instantly welcoming. Like bumping into old friends at the cricket, and sliding straight into some happy banter.

The Gherkin loomed into view along with provocative youngster The Shard. Nattering about kids, our cabby said, “A mate of me old man reckons you should treat boys like dogs. Run ‘em ragged all day, then feed ‘em and put ‘em to bed.”

And that’s why we love London.

*

A decade back and living north of the city, we’d take visitors, without telling them much, on the Northern Line from Kentish Town to Westminster. We’d scale the stairs, rush out into the light, and right there in front of them, to their surprise, would be London’s most lovable landmark, Big Ben.

We did this with Alex and Max too. For them Big Ben’s initial significance was through the film Cars 2, as the place where Professor Z traps Finn McMissile, Holly Shiftwell and Mater. But you already knew that.

It was New Year’s Day. So we found a spot on Whitehall to watch the traditional parade. Suddenly it began, with rousing music from that most cherished British institution, the University of Texas Longhorn Alumni marching band.

Once we’d enjoyed the spectacle for something approaching seven minutes the wife decided we should pop into a nearby pub for lunch. “Think of the children,” she said.

The Silver Cross was a bright opening to our Ashes pub tour. Like Justin Langer getting a solid forty in the first dig, I had a Staropramen pint, and there was a lager and black for the bride. Having fended off the new ball, we played our gastronomic shots. Scampi and chips, steak and ale pie, and kids’ serves, which were good if unspectacular, like a second XI middle order.

A hospitality company, Taylor Walker has run English pubs such as the Silver Cross, for two centuries. If he hasn’t, the new Adelaide Crows captain should claim this etymology. It’d fit within his robust narrative: Broken Hill boy, not uncomfortable within a boozer, former global beacon for the mulleted.

*

London Eye. Up we go. The river shrinks, and the cityscape stretches. Now, multiple interactive touch screens litter the capsules, and there’s vaporous Wi-Fi. Shouldn’t we simply look out the window, and enjoy? Are we so addicted to the digital that even London can’t sustain our gaze?

The rain became ridiculous at the zenith of our ride, and we could just see the Houses of Parliament. Remarkably, it was the first bad weather of our fortnight in Europe. The capsule was a glass submarine, but the boys left buzzing.

Cantilevered observation wheels aside, sightseeing remains best by foot. Our hotel sits within the shadows of the Monument (to the great fire of 1666) and heedful of the cabbie’s son-raising philosophy, we go up and down the Thames. Daily. Maniacally.

Like scamps, Alex and Max run and parkour between the Tower of London and Blackfriars Bridge. St Paul’s. HMS Belfast. The Founders Arms (Coopers Sparkling Ale now available). The iconography! The Tate Modern. The Globe. The new Nando’s at Bankside. At dusk, with the tide out, they dash about on the riverbank, and throw stuff at the freezing water.

*

With Kerry and the boys ice-skating, I’m solo in London on a Sunday morning! I walk. Time can appear elastic, and gazing at Trafalgar Square’s bronze lions and Norwegian spruce tree, and across to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, it seemed we’d only been away for a long weekend, and not nine summers.

I dive into Soho. Losing my usual spatial bewilderment, I know precisely where I am. I round the corner and spot the youth hostel we once stayed. Was it fourteen years ago? Had the Adelaide Crows really lost four preliminary finals since then? Had only nineteen Spiderman films been released in the interim?

I then photographed Berwick Street as it features on the cover of (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory by Oasis, and imagined Noel and Liam and I in the gutter, happily bashing the fook out of each other with expensive guitars.

If you let it, nostalgia can kidnap your life, so I snapped back to the moment. I strolled over to Oxford Street.

*

London’s Natural History museum is magnificent. The Volcanoes and Earthquakes, and Entomology sections investigated, we steer Alex and Max towards the blue whale. Grrr. Another gift shop.

When Kim Jong-un takes command he’ll annihilate every single gift shop using the same precision his late father displayed with a Hot Dot: a 38-under par 34, for 18 holes at the 7,041m Pyongyang Golf Course. Eleven holes-in one. As witnessed by his seventeen bodyguards.

The blue whale looks old because it was completed in 1938. Weighing six tons, it dominates the room, and is impossible to capture entirely in a photo.

Orbiting the whale, I’m startled that coins are thrown onto its massive fluke. Do the punters flip a quid and wish for West Ham to beat Chelsea? For the stockroom assistant to win Big Brother? For a Susan Boyle CD?

*

Down into The London Dungeon! Jack the Ripper, medieval torture, Guy Fawkes, Sweeney Todd, and a gift shop combine into a woolly performance, and it was excellent.

“Giant leeches were used to protect people from the Great Plague of 1665 by removing bad blood,” cried the doctor. Our seats wriggled beneath us as if these parasites were urgently seeking somewhere warm and moist. Being an owner of warm and moist, I leapt up. Alex loved it.

It was terrifying, but timid next to Margaret Thatcher. Years ago, before her passing, I asked my mate Barry if they’d erect a statue of her in posthumous tribute. “Yes, they will,” he said, “And I’ll head straight there and turn it into a fountain.”

oasis

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Paris: Je Suis un Rock Star

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In Paris I thought about former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. It was either him or Plastic Bertrand. Both had hits in the 1980’s. Both sang in French. Sort of.

*

“Can we go on an adventure?”

“Sure. Which way shall we go?”

Alex is confident. “The front. We can go to the restaurant.”

We’re hurtling across the Alsace near the German and French border, and I glance up at the display. 313 kph. European trains are beyond brilliant. The snow is falling in curtains, and we rush past hills and farms. I spy some pigs.

In the café car we climb onto some stools and gaze out the window. The boys have a Kit Kat. I have a beer. We see wind farms. Go through tunnels. We talk about Harry Potter, the Adelaide Crows (Alex), and the Essendon Bombers (Max). I’ve never been happier.

We slide through Strasbourg. There are ships and boats on the Ill River. “Is that the Titanic, Dad?” Our train is slingshotted by a French motorway whose vehicles seem motionless. “Dad, that looks like our black car!” And then, as talk rolls around, “When does footy start at the Singapore Sharks?”

Trains civilize us. Trains nourish our imaginations. They evoke a romantic age, and easing along the corridors, I should be sporting a top hat and muttonchops.

*

Aside from buses, what’s the worst way to travel? Pushing your own taxicab! Our Parisian driver was friendly, but we were keen to reach our apartment, drop our luggage, and eat. Battling traffic along Boulevard de Magenta, Alex and Max increasingly behave like deer trapped in a Canadian liquor store. Détente was disintegrating.

The cabby wobbled the gearshift as we glided to an uneasy halt. “Problem?” I offer. Wearing the haunted look of a fugitive, he evaluates, “Gear box.” So there I was, as my family stood on the pavement, straining against the shat-itself-cab. Ah, welcome back, sir. Lovely to have you back in the City of Light. Why, you’re even more handsome than I remember. May I offer you a 2004 Bordeaux?

Heading to the Gare de Nord five days later, the driver warns us about railway station crime. “Be careful,” he urges. He then speaks in French to his phone before showing me the translated screen

In Paris a pizza arrives quicker than the police.

*

Returning to Europe, but with the boys, is to visit the continent afresh, and see everything as if for the first time. How terrific is this?

On Sunday we walk down by the Louvre, and turning the corner near the Seine, urge the boys to look westward. And there it was! The Eiffel Tower.

But our view was obscured. We could only see the top half. Chopped down as if kneecapped by the Mafia, it doesn’t function. Painted in 1970’s physics teacher brown, it’s a charmless Soviet radio mast.

The Eiffel Tower’s attractive only when seen in its entirety with, for example, the Champ de Mars framing it. Without its fabulous mise-en-scène, it’s decontextualised, stripped of beauty like a torn painting. But, the boys loved it. Even lining up for two hours in the winter chill to ascend in its elevator. And that’s all that matters.

Our Tudor apartment on Rue Montorgueil is stunning. Featuring exposed beams, characterful floorboards, and an ancient staircase; it overlooks the cobblestoned street, four stories below. The ground floor? A pizza house! Game, set, match. However, the police cruelly cut the padlocks I used to chain myself to the wood oven and beer fridge.

*

It’s probably a hundred types of wrong, but on this, our third visit to the French capital, I’ve still not seen the Mona Lisa. The wife of the former publican of The Sir John Franklin Hotel in Kapunda and The Bushman Hotel in Gawler interests me more. Her name is also Mona. And I’ve not seen her portrait either.

We ride a hop-on, hop-off bus to escape the biting cold, and also because Alex and Max enjoy it. Their personal earphones seem to function as auditory tranquilizers allow them to learn some French history, culture and architecture, which is a wonderful opportunity.

Celebrated Parisian music links the commentary. We hear my Mum’s favourite, Charles Aznavour and his song “La Bohème,” tragic songstress Edith Piaf, and in a surprise, Robin Thicke’s veiled ode to Notre Dame and the Île de la Cité, “Blurred Lines.”

Driving past the Palais Garnier, the narrative continues

Charles Garnier, the renowned architect of the Opera House announced that unlike other Parisian avenues, Avenue de l’Opéra would not be tree-lined, as he did not wish for views of his magnificent creation to be impeded.

I lift an eyebrow, glance at the wife and mouth, “Tosser.” She nods back.

Dining at Jet Lag by The Church of St Eustace is great. Alex declares his cheeseburger the most amazing ever! Once we took our nephew to the Buffalo on Glenelg’s Patawalonga. After his modest meal Dylan says, “This is the best Buffalo restaurant I’ve visited.” Max just eats.

I devour the tarte aux pommes de terre et au boeuf. Wow, I hear you breathe, what a gourmand, a sophistiqué moderne. It’s true, things do sound better in French. My dinner? Yep, cottage pie.

We love the neighbouring Jardin Nelson Mandela and its playground. On our final visit an attendant asks, “Where you from? England?” No, Australia, I reply with a nod. Despite his monstrous size he suddenly seems boyish, and squeals, “Kan-goo-ra, kan-goo-ra.”

*

Paris. Such blinding elegance. Such soaring ambition. This city is splendid. It celebrates the individual, and offers avenues to happiness. I reckon we found some.

Just like Bill from the Rolling Stones

Took her to a disco
In Battersea
I asked her to dance
And then she danced with me

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Munich: Ferret Club is Cancelled

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 v

In Munich I thought about Tom. He’s the agriculture teacher at my Hertfordshire school. A kindly, magnificently original fellow, he’s the volunteer every community needs.

Once during daily briefing Tom announced, “Can you please tell the students that today’s Ferret Club is cancelled? I arrived this morning to find all the ferrets have escaped. Actually, until further notice there won’t be any Ferret Club.”

I also remember him collecting some German exchange students on the school bus. Learning they were landing at Heathrow just after lunch Tom said, “Are we sure they’re Germans? I thought they only flew over here at night.”

*

Afternoon in Munich, and Alex, Max and I go on a canal walk. The trees are bare in the gothic style of a Tim Burton film. The sky’s dark and close. Church spires dominate, and it’s great that nothing can be taller than the Frauenkirche or Cathedral of Our Dear Lady. In Singapore, where we live, building heights are limited by the unromantic practicalities of flight paths.

The boys rush at an entirely wooden playground. The ground’s covered in bark chips and not recycled rubber. Ah, the Old World. As they would in any place and at any time, they bound about like Labradors. At year’s end, it’s renewing.

Is it pointless to traverse the planet and visit a playground? No, I think it’s precisely the reason. You can’t just sprint maniacally from museum to cobblestoned market to ancient freaking monument. The spontaneities, especially if they spark out of a dismal Bavarian park, are to be enjoyed.

Despite growing only cold gravel, the biergarten of The Golden Leaf craftily invites us in for refreshment. Then, with the sun slung low we ramble on. On this jet lagged day, what better to discover than another pub? Why a brewery, of course!

Looming over the Falkenstraße apartments, the Paulaner brewery is a titanic complex including a warmly timbered bar and restaurant. Outside, copper vats cast shadows. Inside, gabbling folk gallop into the cheer. Hefe-Weißbier and apple juices downed, we head back into our afternoon.

*

We promised the boys snow. More like an Adelaide winter, Munich was obscenely warm. We were frantic. With no snow forecast we travel by rail and funicular to Zugspitze, home to three glaciers and Germany’s highest mountain. Yes, trains are The Rolling Stones and buses are a dreadful Boyzone tribute band.

Outside our window snow patches expand and multiply. Disembarking, and then climbing the stairs, we burst out onto a bright, white plateau. It’s vast, majestic, elemental. It’s life, our life, untainted and festive.

Having whispered to each other in that obvious, magical way as we soared skywards in the train, Alex and Max throw snow at us. We play along. Undentably excited, they slip on the ice like newborn giraffes. I swing between laughter and tears.

Next they jump above me on a platform while I take some photos. The westerly sun devours them in its halo, and across the azure emptiness I can see to Austria, Switzerland and Italy. I’m a lapsed Catholic, but standing at the top of Germany, I can almost feel the hand of God.

It’s Christmas and we’ve hauled our boys a long way from the burnt dirt of home. A long way from family and Nanny’s fruit mince pies and friends and Paul Kelly’s story telling as the Boxing Day Test wanders along like an unending Sunday. But this is our gift. This is, I hope, a noble investment in our boys.

We descend to the handsome mountain resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Home to the 1936 Winter Olympics, it borders the town of Wank. Wank has a cable car too. It’s called the Wankbahn. I know, I know. But this’ll still be funny to me, and not a few of you, when I’m an octogenarian. Wank.

There’s a cosy knot of stalls selling handicrafts, Bratwurst the length of rope and the wife’s Germanic weapon of choice, Glühwein. A Christmas market! A man roasts chestnuts. Dogs scamper. Alex and Max spring onto the small stage, and dance. For the first time in days, I don’t hear Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody.” I look over the thunderous, darkening valley. It’s a moment.

*

Wirtshaus in der Au is a Bavarian restaurant famous for dumplings and jazz, and often hosts Dixieland outfit the Occam-Street Footwarmers, which formed in 1953.

We see servers in Lederhosen and bosomy women conveying steins of lager in which a netted shark could drown. We eat roast pork and schnitzel and pork knuckle. Now dreamily helpless, we are upsold from ice cream to the Dessertbrettl.

A regal interval. Then, after a victorious tour of the restaurant, accompanied by sparklers and a clanging cowbell, the Dessertbrettl is carefully docked onto our table’s mothership as if in an indecent pudding version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other diners clap our monstrous gluttony. I can almost hear Wagner. I imagine the waiters who sell these are rewarded with a trip to Majorca.

It is a wagon of lard. There’s ice cream, jellies, chocolates, a vanilla cream pot, mousse, token cubes of fruit, strudel, cakes, and much more. We drag most of this calorific beast home, and subsequently to Paris. Next millennium, an archeologist will dig up our Dessertbrettl, and when no one is looking, eat it.

*

Is anything better than falling snow? It’s too, too long since we last saw some a decade ago. Despite the joy of Zugspitze this is the first time for Alex and Max. It cascades down, and bedspreads the city and us. It’s bliss.

Later, with the boys asleep, the wife opens a window, thrusts her paw at the ledge, and makes a vodka and fresh snow! You can’t buy one of these from a Marina Bay Sands mixologist. Our snowy pilgrimage is complete. It’s the perfect coda to our week in Munich.

Next we wrestle Paris.

f

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Billy the Mountain

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FZ

I sing best when by a washing machine.

Half way across Australia. The farming hamlet of Kimba. Late on a Tuesday. It often was. At that time, no night was safe. Bazz, Hen and I wedged into the laundry, and warbling along with Frank Zappa.

A mountain is something
You don’t wanna fuck with
You don’t wanna fuck with
Don’t fuck around

Stripping precious bushels from the wheat, our voices pranged out across the paddocks. The adult in charge was Coopers Sparkling Ale. Of course, Bazz, Hen and I have been mates ever since.

I first heard Zappa at Bushy Martin’s one summer down at Sellicks Beach. It was Joe’s Garage on vinyl, exhilarating and just a bit dangerous. Here was sophisticated, funny music coupled with contagious lyrics, especially on “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”

Much of my pop culture schooling came on Sunday nights through The Coodabeen Champions. During one episode the best Frank Zappa song was debated. They agreed.

I raced into Rundle Mall, and bought Just Another Band From LA. Inspecting the cartoonish cover, I see “Billy the Mountain” runs for roughly thirty minutes. Epic songs have always bewitched me with their wide landscapes. Empty roads, awaiting traffic.

The storytelling and amusing arrangements make it a masterpiece. Part travelogue and romantic comedy, it opens in Los Angeles, tumbles through Playa Del Rey, Santa Monica, and Canoga Park, before lurching across the Mojave Desert, to The Strip

It’s off to Las Vegas
To check out the lounges
Pull a few handles,
And drink a few beers.

It also functions as an opera and a radio play, with Zappa and cult vocal duo Flo and Eddie alternating as narrators. On a vacation paid for by postcard royalties, our mobile mountain Billy, and his wooden wife Ethell are heading, seismically, to New York.

The heroic pair travel west to east, annihilating various human environments, in a deviant Manifest Destiny. Edwards Air Force Base is an early, delicious target

TEST STAND #1 and THE ROCKET SLED ITSELF… (We have ignition!)… got LUNCHED! I said LUNCHED!

When I lived just north of London in the old Roman city of St Albans, it was a Zappa-free zone for two years. Mammoth in charisma and personal impact, I missed this song. So, in 2005 I had a mate home in Adelaide copy my CD, and send it to me.

Driving down to New Forest’s heathland, the wife and I listened to it one Friday. It provided happy escape from the cheerlessness of the M25 and M3. A universe distant from soggy Hampshire

He was born next to the beef pies,
Underneath Joni Mitchell’s autographed picture,
Right beside Elliot Roberts’ big Bank Book,
Next to the boat
Where Crosby flushed away all his stash.

Mentioning American emblems such as Jack-In-The-Box and Howard Johnsons, this magnum opus inspires me to drive an El Dorado Cadillac and shop at Ralph’s. Just like The Dude in the beginning sequence of The Big Lebowski. To a country boy from South Australia, it’s profoundly panoramic.

Remember the soaring coda of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes?” It’s parodied on “Billy the Mountain.” A key sonic motif is the stab from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and the structure reminds me of “Peter and the Wolf.”

It’s eclectic, as Toto (the dog, mercifully, and not the band) and the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, are juxtaposed with Jerry Lewis samples. Remarkably, all recorded live at UCLA!

Satirising the antihero, a blundering Studebacher Hoch, Zappa’s darts are sharpest on overzealousness, and fawning ignorance, especially in Hoch’s introductory monologue

and, ah, how’s your wife’s haemorrhoids? Oh, that’s too bad… Listen… so you’ve got a mountain, with a tree, listen, causing… oh, my! Well, let me write this down . . . sorta take a few notes here… yeah… ?

The song’s Dadaist, its anarchistic storyline urging anti-war sentiment during its elongated loopiness. But, it’s also debauched, ridiculous, and hilarious.

And, of course, it takes a brutal intellect to invent such fun.

We don’t live in a global village. Mostly, we reside in a culturally identical village, repeated globally. Zappa fought this, and “Billy the Mountain” is musical theatre of prodigious ambition, and equal achievement. It’s among the most engrossing, most weird half hours you can spend.

I often think of being by that washing machine, in its tiny laundry, when three friends squawked out into the undeserving Tuesday dark, with America’s wittiest commentator, Frank Zappa.

A mountain is something
You don’t wanna fuck with
You don’t wanna fuck with
Don’t fuck around

0

When The Sun Sets Over Carlton: Moments in Melbourne

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DK

I am walking towards him.

And there is DK, those Puma bowling boots flying, in his magnificently menacing delivery stride, about to hurl it at me. Doubtless, pitching just outside off-stump, and jagging back sharply and unplayably onto a knee roll. Plumb.

With its classical vitality, and evocations of my summery, simple childhood, the Dennis Lillee statue outside the MCG’s Gate 1 is brilliant. Just brilliant.

*

The MCC library captivates me. A reading room within a colosseum! In other places and times this might be strange. But this is Melbourne. The complete Wisden’s Almanack (still using the archaic “k”) catches my eye, as does its predecessor, Lilywhites. As a built environment the MCG is superb, however it’s also a rich human location. It swirls with stories.

I look affectionately to the Nylex tower. It is colder than eleven degrees.

*

I take the Skybus from Tullamarine to the CBD in twenty minutes. No other city populated by 4.4 million permits such an easy transfer. This pleases me. The Skybus is blasting Triple M. I retrieve my phone, plug in the earphones, and tune into 3RRR’s Respect The Rock with Nicole TadPole.

Federation Square remains arresting, but is discordant, and utterly decontextualized. Is this the intention? It’s a serviceable public square, except, many would argue, a narrative of loss pollutes the pavers. I wonder if finally there’s a begrudging acceptance.

It’d be surly not to invest an hour in Young and Jackson. I imagine when I first visited, the taps poured VB, Fosters and, for the discerning, VB. Murray’s Angry Man Pale Ale is horrible. It possibly speaks of my naiveté concerning American styled beer, but in this case I see “complex character” as encoding for poop. However, Stone and Wood Pacific Ale is golden lusciousness. I drink a second.

My room doesn’t include NITV and The Marngrook Footy Show. Watching The Footy Show is like eating MacDonald’s; few admit to it. And it’s true, courtesy of my Singaporean address, I haven’t seen it for years.

Sam Newman is self-parodying. Does he care about his eponymous character anymore? Nevertheless, there’s a tribute to just-retired Jonathan Brown, and multiple mentions of “frothies.” Before they get to the games, I’m asleep.

*

I read The Odyssey on Mykonos. I heard “LA Woman” in Santa Monica, while driving down your freeway. As a boy, I enjoyed Sun on the Stubble by Eudunda’s favourite son, Colin Thiele. Staying on Flinders Street, I’m reading The Slap. Despite the dark plot, it also celebrates this city’s multicultural confidence. What fun to enjoy the art of a place while there! It informs the literary experience in an intimate, amplified way.

The vinicultural climax is a Murrindindi Shiraz at the Footy Almanac’s Waterside Hotel luncheon. Like the function, it is languid and companionable. The hours rush by. The hours glide by. There’s talk of musician Tim Rogers’ vulnerability within the context of modern masculinity, Dane Swan’s plucky unorthodoxy and Heritier Lumumba’s “I am a golden negro of mother Africa” tattoo.

*

At Docklands Stadium I take in Geelong and Essendon with some Footy Almanackers. I enjoy sitting in the Medallion Club at the Coventry End. The track is a FAST 1; a dry, hard track. The football is Muhammed Ali quick.

Being dispassionate about the result conjures Brecht, and Verfremdungseffekt, or the “alienation” effect. The purpose of this theatrical technique is to make the audience feel detached from the action of the play, and therefore better placed to appreciate it. Yep, as a neutral spectator, that’s me!

Heppell is terrific for the Bombers. As a left-legger he’d fit into Hawthorn’s side, but he’d have to trade his absurd hair to one of the Coasts: Gold or West.

*

Saturday afternoon, and the Docklands for Richmond and St Kilda. I’m at a TAB caravan on the concourse, tapping screens, and scanning the thoroughbred fields.

The wife and I went to Iceland one February. This was Hayman Island next to the frigid lasers of fecking wind slicing at that caravan. Bjork would’ve pulled her beanie of swan feathers down low, abandoned any thoughts of a Rosehill, Race 6 earn and scampered inside.

Good idea.

Having met fellow South Australian Mark “Swish” Schwerdt, we then sit up high in the affectionately labelled Level 3, and chat about our childhoods, Skyhooks, writing, and, of course, cult Crow, Eddie Hocking.

With six goals in the opening term, the Tigers create an irresistible lead. St Kilda provide their opponents Saharan space, allowing frequent invention from Trent Cotchin and Punt Road’s own son of anarchy, Dusty Martin. The Saints kick their only major through Nick Reiwoldt. He’s still as solid as a Chrysler Valiant.

After quarter time, both sides play spasmodic football. The kind that makes folks remark, “ I’m glad I’m not wasting fifty cents on electricity by recording this at home on the Betamax VCR.” Former captain Chris Newman is quiet, but after the half-time siren, threads a tidy goal.

St Kilda hang with them in a way which gives false hope, like the effortlessly beautiful girl you saw on a jetty when you were fifteen. When you were beyond deluded.

Meanwhile, Swish and I are diving into our conversations, and Richmond win by about three lengths.“Oh, we’re from Tigerland” is wonderful as they’re my second team, with the best song. What a shame it can’t be entered in the Eurovision competition. For the yellow and black it’s the first win in their famous nine-match streak. Today is the Saints’ ninth consecutive loss. 2010 must seem Paleolithic.

As we’re leaving I see a merchandise van called the “St Kilda Locker.” Bad eyes. Thought it said “St Kilda Lock Up.”

*

I dine at Il Tempo on Degraves Street.

Eating bruschetta, I reflect on my relationship with the tomato. I fancy tomato soup, but despise tomato sauce, specifically on fried eggs. Surely, among polite peoples, this is indefensible. I accommodate tomato in toasted sandwiches, but I avoid it in the New York underground train network restaurant. I sometimes eat a grilled tomato at breakfast or a BBQ lunch.

Being an adult can be awkward.

In the Sunday quiet I listen to The Whitlams’ “Melbourne.” It’s an enchanting song, and weekend coda.

In love with this girl

And with her town as well

Walking ’round the rainy city

What a pity there’s things to do at home

Y & J

2

AFL Round 10- Adelaide v Carlton: The Pogues or Paul Kelly?

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Image

Our eldest son lost his front tooth yesterday. Already dangling, the other is now lurching across his gum. He is six.

Smiling, he is a little like Shane MacGowan, the lead singer of The Pogues. You know, the one who somehow maintains a pulse. Despite his sustained dedication to not, over these last four decades.

With the annual, happy promise of snow, a big Norwegian spruce in Trafalgar Square, and BBC Radio 2 being obliged to play “Fairytale of New York” every fourteen minutes across December, England does Christmas better than Australia.

It just works better in the dark and the cold.

“Fairytale of New York” is a superbly bleak song. Marrying misery with a rousing melody, the doomed couple bicker and snarl, and of course, it ends badly for them.

Which connects to both Carlton and Adelaide, except that it is only May. For much of the first half, the football goes back and forth, perversely suggesting the call and response form of the duet between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl

I could have been someone

Well so could anyone

You took my dreams from me

When I first found you

I kept them with me babe

I put them with my own

Can’t make it all alone

I’ve built my dreams around you

While this festive ode is euphoric, Sunday’s MCG fixture was dour, and for much of it, lacking music. There would be grander joy within an afternoon spent shopping in Luton. At least there’d be the chance that your umbrella might be picked up in the sleety gale and speared into a Bedfordshire oak tree.

In their peculiar tribute to “Fairytale of New York”, The Crows continue to set their watches to Christmas Island time, well behind that in Melbourne, chronologically and in humanitarian/football supporter terms. And so they only have two goals at the major break. Adelaide’s pre-season strategy of starting in an excruciating way persists into a tenth week. John Farnham has enjoyed shorter retirements.

Norwood boy and Crows fan Paul Kelly’s “How To Make Gravy” is our finest seasonal song. Like The Pogues’ tune, it is jubilant in its despair. Both are anchored in familial misfortune. Each begins with a gentle, welcoming melody, and then erupts into a torrent of regret.

Living in St Albans, just north of London, Paul Kelly’s tour de force was my umbilical cord to Australia. Its evocative power, and fraught, jailed brother were overwhelming. On many a Friday evening I played this song in our tiny townhouse, after beers at The Bunch of Cherries, The Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, or The Goat.

When Peter Luscombe’s drums kick in at

I guess the brothers are driving down

From Queensland and Stella’s flying in from the coast

They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees

Even more maybe, but that won’t stop the roast

I’d be a goner. The heat, the ritual, the anguish. There I’d be, on our couch, blubbing away, wondering what the feck we were doing half a world from home, having, in a sense, voluntarily imprisoned ourselves. Both songs signify Christmas and the end of the year. Although winter has not begun, 2014 is already finished for The Blues and The Crows.

Yarran and Betts have some electric moments, while Thomas for Carlton and Laird for the vanquished, contribute meaningfully. Kade Simpson appears to roam about unchecked and collects a mammon of disposals. There are more clangers than a Chinese gong workshop, and Adelaide’s sixteen behinds is telling.

I’d like to say that the second half was artistic and masterful like Paul Kelly and The Pogues, but I can’t. The error and turnover rates fell. Each team kicked eight goals. It was close.

Within a few weeks, our son will have a new front tooth, and his smile will again be complete.

Adelaide needs to stop its decay, and stop it urgently.

pk

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2013 AFL Grand Final: chook

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chook

9.18am SGT – River Valley, Singapore

Is there a more cherished Australian word than chook? It speaks profoundly of our affection for larrikin idiom, contraction and, of course, poultry. Given the pit of existential terror that is our condominium’s BBQ, we’re having chicken (chook) and salads at our AFL grand final lunch.

Our exclusive ownership of chook was illustrated to me years ago in a Hertfordshire school staff room when I told a joke that ended with a punch line something like, “And mum said, ‘Trevor! Stop doing that to the chook.’” I expected belly laughs and streaming eyes, but the audience response was Easter Island. Beyond our shores, chook does not exist.

11.55am-Tiong Bahru Park, Singapore

As the boys rush about in the playground and zip up and back on the flying fox, I get the ABC on my phone, and from his temple The Coodabeen Champions’ mystical mentor muses.

Guru Bob: Chess is the superior game.

Torch McGee: Greater than Australian Rules football?

Guru Bob: No rule changes for 500 years.

In the late 1980’s on Sunday night drives back to SA’s West Coast, The Coodabeens would accompany me as I hurtled past wheat fields along Highway 1. With the cover featuring two goal umpires in traditional coats, their Double White Album is the best cassette I ever bought. Even better than Ripper ’76. Using a funked up melody from Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train”, Champs’ “Rhys-Jones (Goes A Bit Mental)” remains among my favourite Australian songs.

Rhys-Jones is in there swinging,

Uppercut from Rhys-Jones!

12.05pm- Gawler East, South Australia

It is a sweltering, breathless afternoon here on the equator. Air-conditioning blasting, good folk from Hobart, Vancouver, Kentucky, Brisbane, Henley Beach, and Kapunda are bunched on our lounge. 54 hundred kilometres south it’s a nippy day, and my parents-in-law have lit their fire. Pop! They open a bottle of Bird in Hand Sparkling Pinot Noir, from the Adelaide Hills, to complement their footy viewing.

12.10pm- MCG, Melbourne, Australia

Birds from Tokyo play a couple of songs to an uninterested crowd. It strikes me as forgettable music. Like Brian Taylor’s commentary, it’s affected, cliché, a grating imitation of something much more engaging. “Pre-game entertainment” has always been an oxymoron, but it must be tough when you’re the curtain raiser to the curtain raiser.

12.25pm- Barossa Valley, South Australia

Mum likes the Crows, and does not care much for the rest, so, invited to lunch with some girlfriends, she takes the opportunity. Now home alone, Dad relaxes into his recliner, and a glass of shiraz. He enjoys the match. He’s like me, there are no bad games of football, only ones you don’t watch.

1pm- River Valley, Singapore

Friends from near Louisville are with us, and Mark comments, “Fremantle’s poor kicking might cost them.” I love sharing our game with others. We discuss their visit to the MCG, years ago, when they saw Richmond play.

We also talk about the Kentucky Derby. Mark says, “There’s two ways to experience the Derby. The corporate experience for the rich, and a real experience for the rest of us.” It’s a telling observation on AFL grand final day, in the Fonzie Demetriou epoch.

2pm- Victor Harbor, South Australia

Bob and Trish and their toddler, Jack are on a Fleurieu Peninsula farm stay for the weekend. As the Dockers thrillingly surge in the third quarter, and Bruce brings out his growl, a text appears from Bob

 the purple haze descends

The haze comes, but the brown and gold ultimately disperses the purple smog. Disappointingly, for the specialised subset of Dockers and Prince fans, there is no Purple Reign.

3.10pm- River Valley, Singapore

In our living room, to selected bemusement, the siren sounds. It’s another unique feature to be prized. I always liked the siren at Nuriootpa’s ground, despite it being enemy territory, as its shrill urgency is pure 1939 London air raid. It’s still strangely appropriate in the heart of the German-settled Barossa.

Nathan is a proud Tasmanian, and a happy Hawks fan. I’m pleased for him. In anticipation, he’s picked up some James Boags. We open them enthusiastically. The fruity softness of these Australian beers, contrasts with the metallic sharpness of Asian lagers. They’re a treat.

3.20pm- River Valley, Singapore

“It seems kinda cruel to keep the losing team out on the field,” suggests Mark as Hawthorn is presented to the MCG in a stentorian baritone by AFL announcer Craig Willis, while Fremantle sit there, heads in hands. “In America, the losers would be allowed to go straight down to the change rooms and lick their wounds in private.” I think this tradition means we applaud the runners-up too, conscious that without them there can be no contest. This should continue.

We agree that it is a chief difference. This day is about parallels and diversity, closeness and distance. Football connects. And as generations of ordinary Australians have known, in the dreadful absence of barbequed meat, on this most sanctified day, these simple celebrations are best enjoyed with chook.

DRJ

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The cobra and the condominium

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williard

 

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head.

The Dude, The Big Lebowski

Condominium living with two young boys is to be imprisoned within an endless St Kilda players’ function- minus the moments of deep introspection, and wholesome civic values. It’s occasionally beyond challenging. It’s at the heart of our predicament. To stay in Singapore or head home?

Australia is lucky. Although threatened, a chief reason is the backyard. Here five million Singaporeans wrestle on a napkin. It’s a quarter the size of Adelaide. It’s berserk. There’s a plan to surge to seven million. How can we continue in such crushing lunacy?

Mercifully, nearby is bike-riding, footy-dobbing, scooter-crashing open space, straddling the canal. Recently, as the boys played, an English jogger merrily pointed out the assorted cobra nests. Frenetic construction means homeless snakes slink elsewhere. Obsessed by these reptiles, I’m Willard to the cobras’ Colonel Kurtz. I need to confront one. Not in the zoo. Up the river. Or at a bus stop. We best leave Singapore before I do.

Our school’s in the shadows of Orchard Road, and sometimes, skulking and coiling, cobras come a-callin’. Slouching past, the groundsman saw one inside the PTA office. The PTA president, a bellowing, volcanic empress, sat at her desk, focussing fiercely on her PTA-ing; fabulously unaware of the poised snake. The groundsman stomped. “Watch out! There’s a hideous, poisonous creature! Get out! Get out!” He yelled to the cobra.

I intermittently amble along Alexander Canal to The Boomarang (sic) Bar at Robertson Quay. It shows the AFL on big screens, hypnotic altars. Settling on a stool in the sultry noise, I buy a beer. Football and refreshment finished, I glance at the bill.

Tiger Pint- $15.01

“Excuse me,” I ask, “Is this correct?”

“Yes?”

“The $15 part. I get. Sort of,” I fucking offer, “The government doesn’t want people to enjoy themselves. Ever. It is an obstacle to the singular, undying aim of zealous National Service. But One Cent? Really?”

The bartender blinks. “Sir, this is the appropriate price.”

I can live in a city that cheerfully steals $15 from me for a beer, but my Principles of Drinking, and interior cash register, cannot stomach $15.01. In The Big Lebowski Walter Sobchak hollers, “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?”

Singapore is a pubescent with an attendant sense of self. Its 2013 Grand Prix concert headliner? Justin Beiber. Truly? Is Barnsey retired? The Choir Boys doing a bikie wedding? Metallica has toured; surely they could have been seduced by the petrochemical /banking /biotechnological coin.

Grands Prix peddle aspirational fantasy and boorish volumes of din. We moved here to engage with what we don’t understand, but are snarling motorsport devotees Beliebers? I can’t connect F1 to my fuzzy, involuntary construct of JB. It’s a funny joint, this Singapore.

The government aims to protect its citizenry. Buses and trains are gruesomely crowded; fetid, heaving confines. A billboard campaign directs commuters to

Protect yourself against unwanted sexual harassment

It’s arse-about. Yes to empowerment against predators. But I think an alternate message should be disseminated. I’d suggest, ”Hey you! Shithead. Keep your stinkin’ hands to yourself!” T-Shirt of The Gruen Transfer agrees. There’s much to appreciate about this diminutive island, but it’s often unknowable.

Football is the final dilemma. Next year, Adelaide oval hosts AFL. I’m impatient to take a clattering tram from Moseley Square with our boys, Alex and Max, and walk down King William Road. This is where their learning, their golden heritage waits. Footy happens in Singapore, but as a desolate addendum, a doomed transplant. It’s decontextualized. You can’t get a decent pie here.

And there’s Auskick at Glenelg oval on sun-dappled afternoons. Our boys will scurry about in their too-long sleeves. Delighted shrieks curl about on a sea breeze. We’ll get teary, as one, maybe Max, arrests the Sherrin’s flight, somehow marks the ball- and then kicks it, joyously, messily, toward a muddy mate. And after, in the still swirling exhilaration, A4-sized schnitzels for all. Perfect.

This towering cosmopolis allows us global insight, but country footy is vital too. We’ll watch the Kapunda Bombers and the Kimba Tigers. What is more instructive, more superb than an unhurried Saturday at our game? Yes, we’ll make the most of now. This is a remarkable sabbatical. However, for how long can we resist home?

The Big Lebowski: What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?

The Dude: Dude.

The Big Lebowski: Huh?

The Dude: Uh… I don’t know, Sir.

The Big Lebowski: Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn’t that what makes a man?

The Dude: Hmmm… Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

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How football cost us the 2005 Ashes

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2005

Like a crazed nymphomaniac I could not get enough of the punt.

It was perfect to be an Australian in England when we won the first test by 239 runs. My local friends conceded glumly that the 2005 Ashes were gone. Smirking, I imagined how I’d spend my bodyweight in pound notes when we won our tenth consecutive series.

On the morning of the second Test in Edgbaston our summer guests and we take a day trip to Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s House is affecting and crowded. We visit Nieuwmarkt- zigzagging about the canals and museums, and enter the heart- or is it groin- of the Red Light district with its prostitutes behind windows. Tragicomically stricken with zero speech filters, my mate Bazz hollers across to his wife, ‘Hey Annie!’ He then suggests. ‘Pick out which hooker you’d like to join us for a threesome.’

Late afternoon at O’Reilly’s pub near Dam Square, and the stumps score blazes from a TV screen. Over 400 English runs in a day! Ponting had won the toss, and bowled! I then learn that McGrath, fresh from a man-of-the-match, nine-wicket bag in the Lords test, was a late withdrawal. He injured his ankle playing football! At silly mid-off! And Ponting strangely, unknowably, elected to bowl. Shaking my head, I think I must be a passive coffeeshop smoke victim. Despite the last wicket heroics from Lee and Kasprowicz, Australia is defeated. Arguably, football cost us this match, and the Ashes.

Boston made me a fan of three things: New England clam chowder, the Red Sox and naming beer after national idols. The Barking Crab restaurant faces the old Northern Avenue Bridge in the downtown area. Its shanty-like setting appeals to sailors and Harvard professors, and we devour the tasty seafood. The billboard declares, ‘It’s the best place in Boston to catch crabs.’

T-shirts pronounce there are two baseball teams to support: the Red Sox and whoever beats the New York Yankees. Catching a few innings in America’s oldest continuously operating tavern, The Bell in Hand, converts me. Baseball and cricket are both beautifully hypnotic. Both anchor a country’s summer.

Named for Declaration of Independence signatory, Sam Adams lager encourages me to ask why Australia fails to similarly honour their icons. I’d love to be at the altar of my Sunday pub ordering, ‘Two pints of Dennis Lillee, a jug of Gough Whitlam and a bottle of Bon Scott, thanks.’ Boston’s illustrious baseball history provides a captivating context for the fourth Test at Trent Bridge. In this pre-smart phone universe I frequently visit the hotel’s business centre to check the scores. Flintoff stars again. We’re down a test with only The Oval remaining.

Ashes tickets are as rare as sunburn in Sheffield but, back from North America, we score a pair for the Saturday. Taking the Northern Line to the ground, I’m struck by the blissful civility of those waiting to gain entrance. I’m also struck by the industrial quantity of wine and beer allowed. Adelaide Oval banned BYO decades ago. After lunch the Barmy Army is amply lubricated. Many ditties on their hymn sheets simultaneously tease and glorify Warney. Set to the tune of “Amarillo”, I enjoy

Show me the way to Shane Warne’s Villa

He’s got his diet pills under his pilla

A dodgy bookie from Manila

Nursey’s on her mobile phone

Rain restricts play to only fifty overs, but Langer makes his 22nd century, and Hayden achieves his first ton in a year. After tea, with vino bottles spread about like a berserk Neapolitan wedding, I’m startled by the tidy conduct of the Vauxhall End supporters. The gasometer looms benevolently. The Oval is festooned in Wolf Blass advertising and I’m homesick for Australia and the Barossa.

I dreaded going to school on Tuesday September 13, 2005. The previous afternoon England reclaimed the Ashes for the first time since 1989 and I, as fortune would have it, was teaching just north of London in St Albans. Over the next weeks the banter I had as the conquered Australian in a country celebrating a gigantic sporting triumph, was good-natured. Mostly.

As they had not been born the last occasion England defeated us in cricket, I helpfully suggested my students at Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School (named after the only English Pope) should enjoy the victory. ‘You could be grandparents the next time this happens,’ I lectured. Freddie Flintoff celebrated like a Viking and on the first morning after, Mike Gatting asked him whether he had had anything to eat. ‘Yes,’ replied Flintoff, ‘a cigar.’

I trudged the campus handing over cash to numerous colleagues. I also gave each horribly happy Englishman a letter.

Dear Sir

On behalf of the Australian cricket team I’d like to offer my congratulations on a highly deserved victory. It was a most exciting series.

With the Ashes now completed, I can reveal that the ICC, ECB and Cricket Australia were engaged in top-secret talks over the past months. If Australia had won and made it ten consecutive triumphs, then all future Ashes would have been cancelled and a more competitive nation, officially sought to play Australia every two years.

So whilst cricketers from Italy and the Shetland Islands are disappointed, I for one am pleased that, at least for the next encounter, the Ashes will continue.

Your colonial servant,

Ricky Ponting

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The Frog and The Footy

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Ordering rissoles in Bali is a sign that I need to go home to Adelaide.

It’s a Friday night, and I’m in Barb’s sports bar for the Crows season opener. With an Adelaide Crow tattoo on his arm, mine host Ian ambles by as the club song choruses from the TV. He mutters, “It’s got a good beat, but I reckon the kids won’t dance to it.” He’ll say that another twenty-one times before September. There’s a galaxy of Indonesian dishes on offer, but I inhale a plate of meaty patties, chips and veggies. The footy is streamed from Channel 7 in Perth and, frosty long necks of Bintang aside, when I find myself getting misty-eyed about the Bunnings ads, I know the score.

Then there’s the frog. He lurks in the grounds of our Singaporean condominium, and he’s seeking a mate. After dark, his thoughts turn, as Barry White may have sung, to making a little love or as HG Nelson certainly said, to “wielding the night tools.” His call is a loud, resonating, metallic honk. He honks nightly into the cruel fug. His throbbing desperation wakes me up and keeps me sleepless. Nightly. I want to escape his amphibious ardour so am heading to South Australia for a June holiday.

Despite living on the equator, I love winter. The endless summer here delivers an effortless lifestyle of shorts and swimming, but Adelaide extends her charms. I like dressing for the cold; faded jeans and my boots- indestructible Blundstones bought in Kimba twenty years back. Include Dunlop volleys and a pair of dusty thongs and what other footwear is there? The Southern Ocean often lashes its wind at us so I’m a convert to the hoodie. I’ll stick a pair of rubber boots on each of our boys Alex and Max and they’ll be right. Cousins are often among our first friends and, happily, they’ll all soon be running, yelling and settling their necessary disputes.

I’ll relax in Adelaide, but also tour the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra – viniculturally. Confirmed by one ignoble episode, tropical life and cabernet sauvignon simply don’t combine for me. It’ll be superb to plonk down with some old winter friends from Turkey Flat, d’Arenberg and Katnook, and discover what they’ve been up to. I’m confident that every bottle will burst with stories as I sit at assorted tables with Dad and uncork some robust conversations about footy, the Ashes tour and everything else.

Winter back home often hosts cloudless, still days of pale sunshine; ideal for beach walks and parks. Blokes occasionally label their pubs; Rundle Street’s Exeter is, “The X.” The boys name their preferred coastal playgrounds- the Nemo Park, the Buffalo Park and the Rock Lobster; baptised for the B52’s song I unthinkingly played them once. They also have to climb some trees with their mates.

Enthusiastically standing on the terraces as Glenelg play at Brighton Road could placate my football pang. Contemporary AFL spectators have little opportunity to appreciate the contest, as it should be enjoyed. Standing, skilfully, allows for better talking, laughing and barracking, and also expedites what Roy Slaven described as, “drinking in concert.” Unlike modern colosseums, I can wander to Snout’s bar or the BBQ while maintaining an eye and an ear on the ball, without burrowing down a concrete hole, like a rodent, seeking a snag or a pint.

Improbable footballers such as cult Roosters full forward Grenville Deitrich charm me. Treasured exceptions who, despite their prohibitive shape, advance to a high level. Thankfully, these survive in the SANFL. Just. I favour this over the AFL as the national competition is increasingly conquered by charisma-free robots, automatons manufactured into facsimiles of footballers like an Asimov dystopia.

A fire is vital. Grumpy’s Brewhaus at Verdun boasts a German-inspired microbrewery, wood-oven and combustion stove. A golden pint of Tomcat pilsner and a few slices of Funky Chicken pizza on a Sunday and I’ll be set. I taste it all now and can smell the drifting eucalyptus smoke as Alex and Max scurry through the last of the autumn leaves on Grumpy’s lawn.

Life here in the endless summer is fine, but like gravity, winter at home exerts an indisputable pull. It will be a languid exhalation but, ultimately, I’m hoping that when I return to Singapore, the amorous frog is on his honeymoon.

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From Croke Park to Vicarage Road is a one hour flight with Ryanair

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Dublin’s Croke Park on the All Ireland Football Championship quarterfinal day is fantastic. During our tour of England, Ireland, France and Italy we’d see plenty of cathedrals but with O’Keefe ancestry in County Cork, this is a distinctive pilgrimage.

And while it’s Dublin and Roscommon clashing, a vivid afternoon unfolds. Taxiing to the ground, Dad and I see sky blue tops on scurrying local spectators and bright yellow on the visitors. We pass pubs like Quinns, Kennedys and The Big Tree bursting with blokes roaring and downing pints. Dad and I duck in for a lager. The Red Parrot is thunderous and frenzied but affable.

Our reserved seats are on the top deck of the Hogan stand and Dublin Bay sparkles across to the east. As the match evolves, two local supporters observe, ‘Our centre forward is too slow’, ‘We’re getting killed across half back’ and ‘the umpires aren’t doing us any favours.’ We could be at Footy Park, the MCG or Dutton Park in my hometown of Kapunda. Possessing an aural effect unlike soccer, the crescendo and fall of the GAA crowd is uplifting.

The game is attractive and fluent. The Dubs are quicker than Australian footballers, and as a matter of necessity, lithe and angular. Dublin controls the ball and the lush spaces. In the golden summery light, they tidily account for Roscommon, known also as the Sheepstealers.

Of course, the guilty were often transported to Australia. Leaving Croke Park, Dad and I evade a bony lad enthusiastically jettisoning a hula-hoop of amber onto the concourse. It is uncertain whether he is celebrating or commiserating Dublin’s victory, but there is jeering praise. We return to our digs at Browns Hotel near O’Connell Street, for an Irish music tour through Temple Bar.

I enjoy the dexterity and explosiveness the round ball allows but prefer our game’s elliptical ball. Its blissful and cruel unpredictability seems a candid metaphor for life, which is surely football’s noblest function. Additionally, our code allows and even celebrates goal scoring imprecision by permitting behinds.

How exquisite was Plugger’s famous point after the 1996 preliminary final siren? This, too, reflects an Australian ethos that speaks of our generosity of spirit and innocent effervescence.

Despite our resistance, sometimes sporting teams demand us as supporters. Southampton chose me not because of their soccer prowess but, curiously, their fans’ set list during a fourth round Carling Cup encounter with Watford at Vicarage Road. Some mates and I sit at the Away End and the singing is compelling.

Early in the fixture and expectant, Southampton praise their diminutive striker in blossoming tones

Sup-er Sup-er Kev Sup-er Ke-vin Phillips!

Still 0-0 late in a grim first half but their pride remains contagious. The contrast with the hyper-moronic, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi” is sharp.

We love Southampton, we do!

We love Southampton, we do!

We love Southampton, we do!

Ohhhh, Southampton, we love you!

At half-time the combination of glacial queues and gastronomic judgment makes me unable to buy a cup of Burton upon Trent’s finest yeast- based beverage, Bovril. Five minutes in, they’re down 0-2 to the second division side.

Maintaining the global custom of using ridicule to try to save face, they taunt

We’re in the Premiership

We’re havin’ a laugh!

Suddenly it’s 0-3 and getting grubby. Across the autumnal air of Vicarage Road, the Saints’ choir recites the dismissive,

You’re just a small town near Luton

And then yet another Watford strike and all patience is gone, so they turn cannibal, as Bob my mate in Adelaide says, and start devouring their own

We’re so shite

It’s un-be-liev-able!

Two late consolations for the Saints and the second half, seven goal orgy is over. It is a night of dramatic tragedy on the pitch and musical theatre in the grandstands. Then, this being modern soccer, we of the Away End are funnelled, for our own safety, through a human chute of mountainous policeman.

We’re flushed out of the Vicarage Road ground and along the Watford streets to our Vauxhall Corsa. My evening is emblematic of England: startling and faintly menacing but, as always, richly engaging.

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Footy’s Other Hemisphere

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When living overseas, footy becomes symbolic. A happy emblem of home. Like Merv’s XXXX-foamed moustache on the side of a London double-decker.

Singapore’s Boomarang Bar is one of those Australian themed-pubs that is both brilliant and dreadful. It shows AFL, NRL, and the races from Randwick and Flemington on big screens. It’s at Robertson Quay where the river is muddy and languid; it could pass for the Yarra.

The crowd is older than the backpackers at the Walkabout pub in Shepherd’s Bush, and mercifully, there is no Barnesy banging out over the thick, hot air. It’s Saturday afternoon, and the Crows and Hawthorn are underway in the preliminary final.

This Asian city’s mostly shy and undemonstrative so it’s exciting to see some punters in Hawks and Crows guersneys. Brash tribalism is rare here. There’s banter between the fans. “Ball,” intermittently choruses out across the quay. The footy is electrifying. The Hawks threaten constantly, but we persist.

We know that it could be Tippett’s valediction. He monsters Schoenmakers and with Walker, combines for eighteen contested marks. It’s close. Back home in Adelaide, my mate Bob texts. It’s too tense, too pulsating for him. He wants a personal media blackout.

Bob was in Edmonton in 1997, for the Crows’ first flag. It was a primitive world. Footy was inaccessible. No social media. No streaming. Many, like me, were sans mobile phone. During GF week Bob instructs me not to inform him of the result. With the discipline of a Roman soldier, he avoids it.

Then, at 2.30pm Saturday, Alberta time, to guarantee the authentic Australian experience, he and his friends watch a VHS recording of the game over a BBQ and beers. And like us seventeen hours previous, underground in Grote Street’s Players Bar, he is bewitched by Jarman’s sublime clinic, and Macleod’s exquisite poise and poetry. We love Bruce McAvaney’s climax: “Jarman. Jarman. That will do. That. Will. Do.” Bob rings after their final siren, waking us, in Glenelg, to our glorious and groggy Sunday morning.

With only the grand final telecast in Canada, he tells me he followed the Crows’ campaign on the internet. In ’97 this meant reading the footy online as an underling at AFL house, typed the action on their rustic website: Smart handballs to Bickley. Bickley kicks to Ellen. Essentially, it is a three-hour telegram. Like listening to Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles in the farm kitchen.

At the Boomarang Bar, we’re a disparate group. Like us, Annie is from Adelaide. She is avid; she streams 5AA’s call of practice matches. Nathan is from Tassie and loves the Hawks. His fiance, Alison, is from Vancouver. At half time I ask her, “Are you growing to love our footy?”  She replies that she’s, “Getting there.” As Adelaide and Christchurch are sister cities, our Kiwi friend Ariana supports the Crows.

In 2004 we were living just north of London in St Albans. I’d taken my Sherrin, and would occasionally have a few dobs by the Roman walls in Verulamium Park. Back home in the Barossa, Mum and Dad taped the Crows’ games, and mailed the wins to us. They saved plenty on postage that year.

My friend Barry, from Harrow, records the grand final on Sky Sports, and I enjoy Port’s triumph. Whilst I love beating Port in the Showdowns, I am an atypical Crows fan who barracks for them when they play interstate teams. It’s a residual from the State of Origin glory days of the 1980’s.

Barry’s an Irishman, and his Catholic passion is exceeded only by his worship of Wealdstone FC. I’m with him in Wiltshire by Salisbury Cathedral for the 2005 season closer when the Stones score in the last minute to avoid relegation by a single goal. In reverential electronic whispers, he texts me one fucking goal three times the following Sunday. Returning to Adelaide, Barry gives me four shares in Wealdstone FC. Every year I am posted the annual report.

Johncock puts us up with seconds left, but then the Hawks pinch the prize.I t was a tremendous contest and, wretchedly, the Crows fourth consecutive preliminary final loss. Annie and I agree that we’ve done well, and next season our youngsters like Dangerfield, Sloan and Walker will improve. Bob and I text. Mum and Dad message their pride. We take comfort in the future.

We leave the Boomarang, and walk home along the muddy Singapore River.

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