NPM

National Preparedness Month.

I mean really. It’s been eight years since Pearl Harbour v02, when the second round of evil furriners with aircraft made their presence felt. If you’re not prepared yet…

And a month?

How long does it take to get prepared, when you’ve had eight years’ lead time?

I despair. Especially when I see that they weren’t even prepared to hire a designer to do the logo. And the slogan – I’m having a Seinfeld moment – what’s with that? “Are you prepared or are you prepared?” Huh?

I refer you all to this. Perhaps the most coherent thing to be said on the subject.

Tell ‘im ‘e’s dreamin’!

Or, There’s No Place Like Home.

It’s big, and we finally saw the damn thing. Australia, that is.
Despite Our Germaine, despite The Honourable Peter Costello, BA, LLB, MP, despite a host of people telling us to the contrary, we actually went and saw and judged for ourselves. And lo, it was good!
No, it’s not a documentary, as some seem to have assumed, despite the factual existence of the place in the title.
It’s a rollicking story, sentimental, sympathetic, funny and fictional, though hung on a framework of historical events, in the same way as a zillion other WWII dramas, comedies and romances have been.
I honestly don’t know why there’s been such a white, middle-class backlash against this film (as it seems that there’s been, given at least the two reviewers above,) unless it can be said that they either feel vaguely guilty about being white and middle class, or they just don’t get it.
Baz is telling a meta-story, a story about telling stories, and the importance of telling stories, and the importance of growing up with stories to tell. He has fun with that notion in a filmic way, using the language of cinema, quoting from other big film stories, using broad strokes on a broad landscape, and generally being entertaining. The film is long, but it didn’t feel long – I was never bored. It’s blatantly emotionally manipulative, but that comes with the genre, and I didn’t feel it was cynically so.
I remember seeing Strictly Ballroom at the Sydney Film Festival when it came out, and the horror that surrounded it. It was as though Australians had never heard their own accent played back to them before – the Cringe was palpable! How could that terrible Mr Luhrman portray Australians like this, people were saying, and yet that film has entered the Australian cinematic canon, it has been taken to heart around the world, even in the Mother Country, Our Germaine’s adopted home, the UK TV classic Come Dancing has become Strictly Come Dancing!
Maybe it’s time the cringe was dropped, and it was accepted that if we tell Baz Luhrman he’s dreamin’, that might be a good thing. Even Australians have stories to tell.

staged events

Well, we’ve braved the theatre twice in recent days, much to our surprise!

Neither of us are big fans of stuff on stage, but we found, in the cornucopia that is London, a couple of things to tickle our fancy.

Me personally, I find all that stagecraft guff a bit heavy on the “stagey”, and a bit light on the craft. Like the production of The Glass Menagerie we saw here in a West End theatre last year. The critics, amateur and pro alike were falling over themselves (maybe each other, I don’t know, I didn’t get that close) to laud its virtues, whatever, and however thin, they may have been. “Yawn”, I say, “yawn” again. Just not my scene. Plays? Emotional drama on stage? I see over-wrought waiters in tights (or whatever the costumes might be.) For emotion, give me the gritty close-ups of film (or real-life, even) any day.

If you’re going to entertain me, make me laugh, I say! Even bitterly, in recognition of human foibles and follies. Dazzle me with wordplay, thrill me with gymnastics, but don’t try to embroil me in the emotional intrigues of characters (people I don’t even know, or like!) because I’ll be yawning all the way to the tube-station.

So, back to the main story, first up we saw The wonderful Bill Bailey, who was already familiar from stage and screen – if you don’t know him there’s plenty to find on Youtube for a glimpse into his quirky and deconstructed world (“how many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb?”*). There’s not much I can say about him that can’t be gleaned from the online recources, except that if you get a chance (and you’re into that sort of thing) go and see him. He’s my kind of funny.

More in the next instalment, coming soon…

*one – no, two- no, four! – no, eight…

QI

QI, which stands for Quite Interesting, is the best quiz show in the world, and probably the only one not to be copied in Australia. It was quite disturbing to discover that Good News Week and Spicks and Specks are both British in origin, and Australia even imports the same guests! QI is hosted by Stephen Fry, a national treasure, (and he’s podcasting now). You can download it (illegally) not that I’d ever condone that sort of thing. And for your amusement, here is a clip from same – the cutest and funniest bird in the world, the mannikin bird – it moonwalks to attract a mate.

The Universe hates me

Since last Wednesday these are the good things that have happened to me:

booked for ‘audition’ tracklay – yay! At last I get to use my sound library again! And all the new stuff I’ve recorded! And a semi sort of concrete kind of offer of maybe work in the possible sort of future!

Jamesy got lots of work!

These are the bad things that have happened to me:

Jamesy got lots of work. 14 days in a row, long hours, me alone 15 hours a day

lost crappy weekend job – someone undercut my rate. Now completely unemployed

drive with sound library on it failed (ten years of recorded and collected sound) – not to worry though – I left a backup in Sydney in case of just this situation! Phew!

backup copy sent from Sydney has no sound library on it due to sound library not being on backup drive

cannot do above tracklay due to complete and utter lack of sound library

laptop fell off bedside table – twice – due to earplug cord pulling it off as I turned over whilst half asleep listening to podcasts

centre pin of power supply for laptop broke off inside laptop (see above), therefore seriously compromising laptop and killing power supply

new earphones in bad shape

skinned index finger trying to save laptop

eBay sniping software failed to work three times – missed out on a Nelson bench, an Ercol coffee table and a G Plan coffee table

told to send my cv to ‘mailtoblahblahblah@wankersoundpostproductionplace.uk’ by two companies (i.e they told me to send it to the receptionist (i.e they won’t even open it))

managed to burn chicken stock and nearly ruin stockpot that we shipped over from Australia- who on earth does that?

failed to write one blog per day

Blah. Blah. Blah.

The newt world order

Yes, the title is particularly misleading. This post has nothing to do with amphibians, nor their emergence as our (probably deserving) overlords.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about walks in the country in England.

First a quick description of my terms – well, term: when I say country, I feel confident in saying that anytime you see two patches of greenery bigger than a footy field that are more mud than grass you’re probably in ‘the country’, even if it’s not even an hour on the train out of central London. Suddenly it turns into a weird mixture of field, rolling hills, and ticky-tacky box-shaped housing. If you look another couple of hundred metres beyond the train-tracks you’ll see some houses built before the ’50s, and possibly before the 1850s.

The funny thing about the English hobby of rambling (as opposed to bushwalking in Australia or tramping in NZ) is that you can walk from some convenient town for five hours, and in the course of that walk pass through three villages, including two pub stops, and have high tea in the meantime, before catching your train home. My experience of bushwalking in Australia is: get off train, walk for five hours through dry bush while praying that the water you brought with you will last the distance, pray also that track finishes where it started, and catch train home, parched and hungry. Much more satisfying! You really know you’ve been on a walk!

It seems to drive a small economy, though, the walking thing – we stopped at a little pub called the Stag and Huntsman at midday the other day, after walking for a pleasant couple of hours along the Thames, and luckily we were dead on midday – by half past there wasn’t a seat in the house, and the collection of hiking boots in the entryway was second to none by the time we left, nothing you’d find in an Australian pub, half the clientele were in (as I suppose they call them here) stockinged feet! Quaint, I like to think =^), but rather civilised.

The pub food (most important, besides the locally brewed ale – I keep saying that English ale actually makes sense when it’s sub 10 degrees outside) was not so bad, though huge – Linda ordered the chicken liver pate, and I got the ploughman’s lunch. There was probably 3/4 of a kilo of pate, with 4 large triangles of white toast, sad salad and Sauerkraut of the most scooped from a bucket description, whereas mine consisted of a pickled onion (pretty good) the same sad salad and Sauerkraut, but with a brown roll, chutney, and half a kilo of Oxford blue and Cheddar*. We were keen do set off and do some serious walking afterwards. And we didn’t stop for tea in the next village. We just kept walking.

Henley. Check it out.

Jo, the ball’s in your court.

*Amounts may be exaggerated for comedic purposes. Though not by much.

The sound of things exploding

I don’t know – is it just me? It could be, but I’ve done no research to contradict my theory. I find it wonderful that here in England they have this thing called Guy Fawkes Night.

Imagine in America, if they took what appeared to be the single greatest attack on their Democratic, Land Of The Free, Hernhurn, Way Of Lahf , and celebrated it by handing out free pilot’s licences to all and sundry for a day, or even by having a national Carnival of Exploding Airplanes. Maybe some kind of Einstürzende Neubautenstag. No? Can’t quite picture it? Didn’t think so. That’s pretty much what we have here. A (Catholic) bloke called Guy Fawkes, in an ill-fated attempt to bring down the (Protestant) Government of England, was caught red-handed with a giant load of explosives. Consequently, giant loads of explosives are sold to the public to detonate at will for this festival of noise and light. Admittedly, it took a few centuries (and probably then some) to get over burning effigies of the man himself, after he was tortured and killed by the authorities. The US hasn’t managed to catch the guy they most blame for their current national trauma, Osama bin Laden, so effigies of him might be a little premature. Never mind, they know where to find the bloke who was fiddling (playing golf, whatever) while New York burned – the incompetent on whose watch it happened, George Bush the Inestimably Lesser. That’s what they could have every September in the States (not to disrespect the tragedy of the recurring natural disasters prevalent in California) 9/11 – Bush Fire Day!

The White Lake – much better than the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is more than 100 cm lower than it was 25 years ago, according to Harry Shearer, because of uncontrolled irrigation. I have no idea what that has to do with this post, and oh yeah the polar ice caps are going to be gone by 2077. Harry Shearer told me that too. Possibly that’s the white lake connection – the poles will just be big mushy slurpies in the not too distant future. I’m glad I wasn’t born like today or anything.

Oh yeah and this cheese is really good. If you like goats. And camembert.

A pedestrian observation

Londoners are a weird mob (some might say it goes without saying, but we’ll leave them to their opinions), but I mean specifically on the footpath. I’m not the only one to notice it, it seems to be a standard tactic here: as you walk towards a fellow (or lady) pedestrian, even on an otherwise uninhabited pavement, they will swing towards you, into a possible collision path. As a newcomer to London you might (not unreasonably) think them drunk, and step lightly aside as necessary to avoid collision. Fair enough, problem solved, you might think.

At this juncture, some of you have no doubt already leapt mentally ahead (the story can’t be that simple, can it?) to the next possibility, and I fear you’re on the right track. At that time of day, whatever time that might be, that class of person (that’s a big deal here) can’t be drunk. Yet. So they’re doing it deliberately.

I’ve tested this. Show weakness, and they’ll walk straight ahead on their new course as if that was their birthright. They were born in Leicester or Worcester or Cirencester or Auckland or some such, after all (London’s not that great a probability, in my experience). But! If you refuse to give ground at the onset of swerve, their path will subtly alter, as though it was all simply a mistake, and there may be a gentle brushing of sleeves. That’s your bold customers. If you have a more tentative swerver you’ll miss them altogether. If, on the other hand, you take the initiative before them, and give a subtle (but readable) sidestep in their direction, they will, depending on the timidity or otherwise of their demeanour, either suddenly give way, all but leaping into the gutter to give you the room you obviously feel you need to function adequately on the footway, or hold their course, leaving what was usually actually more than enough room in the first place for all concerned.

In the immortal words of Arthur Atkinson, “‘ow queer!”

Luckily the vehicular traffic operates less idiosyncratically.

Chopping, boiling and surfing (and smelling funny)

We’ve been here, what, 5 months now? We’ve been living in a succession of furnished houses, without anything resembling a stock pot or a sharp knife in that time. Thankfully, now, our two most missed kitchen items have arrived from home (cheaper than buying them here anew!) so now we can boil pasta, make tasty stock aplenty, and actually cut things, rather than saw through them with a blunt object, once again!

The other thing that we missed was our Apple Airport wireless internet thingy, which arrived, with our old cable modem, so now we can both be online at once, rather than impatiently taking turns, and from comfortable locations, rather than tied to the desk with a cable. One small problem occurred, though. The modem, which we weren’t, luckily, planning to use, was lurking in the bottom of the stockpot under its colander bit. It successfully lurked unnoticed – result: modem flavoured chicken stock. Oh well, the next batch will be better.