Tag Archives: Rhino Room

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Mystery Pub: In Future Nursing Homes There Will Be No Jaydens

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I message Claire with a brevity I hope conjures a sense of espionage. I enjoy these conspiratorial moments.

5.37pm in the TAFE car park.

We meet at precisely this time.

Success! Claire thinks we’re walking. It’s only 750 metres or a ten-minute stroll on this warm afternoon.

So, to continue the mystery, I decide to drive us.

This month’s Mystery Pub is the Crafty Robot, a brewery on Grote Street with a sprawling beer garden and cavernous, concrete interior. Come early evening we’ll all be in another interior of a more cosy nature.

Making her (overdue) Mystery Pub debut, my sister Jill breezes through the gate, and we assemble about an outside table.

Claire volunteers to procure the drinks. Returning, she clasps a white wine, a (0.0%) beer for Jill, and a Blonde Ale (4.5%) for the only non-blonde in our party, me. With sips and nods and brief individual analysis, all are deemed satisfactory.

We chat and eat a shared dinner of deep-dish margherita pizza which has recently transitioned from being a (dysfunctional) quiche. There’s also a plate of indeterminate potato stuff. Inside a Quiz Night rumbles into animated life. Peering through the glass I see the MC moving about with insistent evangelism. I imagine him asking, ‘On which Beatles’ album does Ringo not play a cowbell?’

We speak of the Fringe and our aspirations. Claire enquires.  ‘What are you doing, Jill?’

‘Got a few shows booked. 27 Club (about the musicians like Hendrix and Cobain who all shuffled off at this tender age). One in Stepney too.’

Claire recalls last Saturday’s play in the library. ‘Prometheus was hard work. Youth theatre. After a few minutes I was waiting for it to end.’

I agree. ‘It asked the audience to work too hard.’

Conversation then moves to the immediate for we’re going to the Fringe’s premiere comedy club, the Rhino Room and specifically its subterranean venue, Hell’s Kitchen.

The fifty-first edition of Mystery Pub concludes. We’ve had a splendid hour.

*

Until Claire was appointed as the Auslan interpreter for Brett Blake’s stand-up show we’d not heard of him. Ambling in, Jill and I have no real expectations but present ourselves with open minds.  

Hell’s Kitchen is tiny, the size of a modest suburban lounge room. It’s close and hot down there (as befits a venue called Hell) and the stage is only elevated a few inches. It does the trick. Claire’s on a chair to the left of Brett.

You might know BB from his recent appearance in a betting ad with Shaq O’Neill. He clicks up a photo in which he’s standing next to the seven-foot basketballer and is about half his height. Upon shaking his hand he describes, ‘My hand got lost in his palm and I didn’t touch one of his fingers.’ This is all context for his main story about being arrested when he was seventeen.

As the show progressed, I formed a view. Blake’s a brilliant writer and storyteller: observant, skilled with language, assured.

His routine’s about growing up in an outer suburb of Perth (tough) and his homelife (loving), school life (challenging for all) and escapades at large (hilarious and harrowing).

I roared like a drain (what does this actually mean?) across the sixty minutes. The highlight was BB talking about cars and youth and motoring perils. Mid-anecdote he said,

‘Jayden? Jayden? Silence. No reply. The nursing home was quiet.’

He continued. ‘This is because in the future there’ll be no Jaydens in nursing homes. Why? Because they’ll all have met their untimely ends. Every Jayden will perish by accident in a shitty old Commodore. No Jayden will live to fifty.’

The room erupts. The truth in it—absurd, yet undeniable—hits us all and there’s bellowing aplenty.

Later, I wonder how many ways the mandatory forearm tattoo can be spelled.

Jaden. Jaydon. Jaiden. Jaidyn. Jadyn. Jaidan. Jaydin. Jadin. Jaedon. Jaedyn. Jaydyn. Jeyden. Jadon.

What’s your favourite?

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Walking each other home

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It’d been a forgettable November afternoon at work.

But, one click led to another and I legitimately found myself watching a TED talk by the American writer Anne Lamont. It’s called, ’12 truths I learned from life and writing.’ She is funny and wise and worth hearing on many topics. However, the idea that’s made an impact on me isn’t even one of her declared truths. She was mid-point and as an aside remarked that

We’re all just walking each other home.

I paused the video and sat at my desk for a while, looking at nothing in particular. Like all great poetry this simple arrangement of words held a profound notion. Later I shared the idea with Claire.

It’s about beauty and hope. It suggests joyful partnership and unalterable love. It’s uncluttered. It encapsulates so much.

The twin and universal images of walking and home marry so elegantly.

*

Following Nazeem Hussain’s stand-up comedy gig at the Rhino Room for which Claire was an Auslan interpreter (she did a great job and was funny too) it remained a warm, buzzing evening so we ascended the 2KW bar for a snack and nightcap. The Fringe Festival was well underway. There was much to celebrate.

The streetlights twinkled and if a hens’ night brood hadn’t claimed the deck for a private function then we would’ve drank in the vista over the Festival Centre and Adelaide Oval. Instead, we were happy to sit in a booth.

We returned to the idea of walking each other home.

It is the loveliest thought.

Over her shiraz Claire observed that, ‘It’s an idea that can only really work later in life.’

I agreed that it’d be somewhat ‘previous’ to promise it in one’s twenties, the metaphor of home perhaps being a mood-killer on a first date.

It appears to be an idea that is attributed to nobody in particular and is timeless. Some could see it as a little grim, but for me it speaks of serenity and dignity. It suggests the beach in winter; winery fireplaces and dawn’s first light when the dark is eased back down into the earth.

I’m grateful that I discovered it on a listless afternoon at work.

Although it’s not from a poem, it’s the noblest poetry.