I went for a brief walk up the road this afternoon, as those participating in the Mardi Gras parade were preparing themselves. As the crowd gathered, there was some pre-MG entertainment. I love this song. It was the UK entry for Eurovision last year.
For just a moment I thought I would have stayed longer, as I was really enjoying walking around the crowd. But then it got busier and noisier and all a little same-ish. I mean, I´ve been in the parade three times and have lost count of the number of times I´ve attended. So I´m back at home watching Music Max thinking ¨Yeah, I´ve flown the flag enough¨.
Even though it’s Monday, the fourth day of a long weekend, I’m still doing some of my Sunday “ritual”, such as catching up on my homework for Swedish class, and doing my clothes washing for the week ahead.
I remembwer vividly, when I first moved to Sydney, I had a fairly aged washing machine. It was one of those machines which got into a bit a frenzy on the spin mode. It would literally “walk across the floor”. Though it didn’t seem to cause me much concern, it obviously disturbed the neighbours. A few months after living in my first apartment block in Sydney, I remember walking down the stairs late one night to put out the garbage, only to overhear the neighours say “it’s that fucking washing machine again”. A week or so later I went out and bought a new washing machine. I also vowed never to do late night washing again.
Over twenty years later, the guy who lives upstairs is in the same position. There’s lots of late night washing (several loads) and he has a washing machine that almost shakes the apartment block to its foundations. Twenty years ago I might have been concerned; now I just go “meh”. I’m not going to lose sleep over it!
The other “oh yeah, I’ve been there” moment happened on Friday night, having a beer at my local pub, “The Crown”. Recently, I’ve got to chatting with an Irish bloke called Darren or Derryn (I’m not sure of his name, due to his accent).
“Why does the pub close at 10 o’clock?”, he asked me, and “Where can I go after this?”, he added. When I told him about the pub closing hours in NSW, and that his only option on Good Friday after 10 was probably, “Star Casino”, he said, “This is a fookin disaster”.
I remember all too vividly the lessons of Good Friday closing about 25 years ago in Wagga, and having a dinner party that was almost completely “dry”, as very few of us had bothered to go to the bottle shop the day before.
Even though I’ve had four days off (albeit with a few bits of work here and there) I haven’t done all that much this Easter, despite my best intentions.
The only thing I planned to do that I actually did was visit the Bald Archy Exhibition. It’s an awesome exhibition I’ve been attending since it was first held at Coolac in Southern NSW. Lots of fun at the expense of our politicians and other public figures.
Bald Archy 2019
I also went out for breakfast at my local cafe.
The rest of the weekend has spent binge-watching TV (including the new Chris Lilley series), listening to the radio, and quite a few “afternoon naps”. Though I did get up early this morning to enjoy the sunrise.
Though I did get up early this morning to enjoy the sunrise at Sydney Opera House.
Nonetheless, it’s been a terrific weekend. And with the sound of the washing machine in the background, there’s even been some time to do a blog catch-up also. Sorry, nothing too exciting. Just life right now.
It’s not often you hear the name “Nanne Grönvall” mentioned anywhere outside of Sweden. She’s a well-known singer-songwriter there, and she just happens to be the daughter-in-law of Benny from ABBA. But aside from a few attempts at Eurovision, she is really only well-known in Sweden and usually sings in Swedish.
Earlier this year while I was in Sweden I saw her perform, and was lucky enough to meet her and obtain a signed CD which I’ve had on my notice-board ever since I’ve been back. Most people who come into my office would have no idea who she was. But someone today did.
He was a bloke from Melbourne who was into discuss a potential project. As the meeting ended with the usual pleasantries he then said – and you could have knocked me over with a feather – “I love your signed Nanne Grönvall CD”.
“I’m a huge fan of Melodifestivalen”, he told me when I asked how he knew Nanne. We then went on to chat about this year’s competition, and I then told him I’d attended and was able to show him some photographs. How random is that?
A few hours later I was on a bus and I heard a few more words you hardly ever hear in Australia: grönsaker and kyckling (the Swedish words for vegetables and chicken). There was a bloke seated behind me who was obviously chatting to someone about their shopping requirements for dinner that evening.
So it’s been a day of random Swedish moments. I’m sure it’s a sign… (of something).
I was on the bus, by the way, to see my friend who has been in hospital for a few weeks. He’s not 100%, but considerably better than he was a few weeks ago.
Catching the bus this morning, I noticed the young Asian woman reading a copy of The Bible, while the middle-aged Caucasian man in front of her was reading The Da Vinci Code.
When I went to get my shoes repaired, I noticed the look on the bloke’s face that said he didn’t want to repair my shoes even before I brought them out of the bag. You could just tell repairing shoes was something he hated doing, a sideline in his business. And I just knew he was going to say they were going to be unrepairable – even though I thought they were – even before I showed them to him. I’m looking for a better shoes repair man, by the way.
I noticed the blank looks on the faces of the people in the various shops I went to, looking for a mini coaxial cable connector, to lengthen the lead for my Foxtel connection. “You want USB?, they all said blankly.
I noticed the look of satisfaction on the face of the assistant who made my a “Hotdog with the works” at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels. You could just see how proud she was to have put so much food on such a small bun.
I noticed the look of frustration on the face of the bloke in Bing Lee who gave me a discount on my mini coaxial cable connector, but then who couldn’t get me through the cashier, because the woman in front of me was paying off a plasma (or something) with a fist-full of ten dollar notes which needed recounting.
I also noticed the dismissive look on the face of the woman I bought shoes from, when I told her the pair she had selected for me were not large enough. “Can you try again to fit them?”, he she said to me, to which I replied, “No they don’t fit”. The look on her face was quite dismissive, as if I hadn’t tried hard enough to make them fit.
And I noticed the look of fear on the faces of other commuters on the bus today when a rather smelly looking shady character got on the bus looking for a seat on the way home. “Don’t sit next to me”, I could hear them saying to themselves in a Homer-like inner voice. Of course, he sat next to me.
All in all, I “noticed” a lot of things today. Possibly too much? Maybe it’s my new glasses?
“Tom Hughes was Lucy Turnbull’s dad”, I whispered into the ear of my friend Graeme. Though it wasn’t specifically mentioned on the Mardi Gras History Walk, it was something I knew which added to the story. Historian, Robert French was talking about a meeting of the Liberal Party of NSW held in the early 1970s. Tom Hughes, as Attorney-General was considering a range of homosexual law reform, Robert explained, and was being opposed by conservative forces in the Liberal Party. The irony of the situation now facing Lucy’s husband, the Prime Minister, and the similarity to the situation facing her father almost fifty years ago was not lost on me.
There’s all manner of phrases about “learning from history” and how “history never repeats”. But, honestly it does. And if you look to history about how different types of people have reacted to issues/situations in the past, you can better understand human nature, and some of the human motivations for current issues.
And that’s why I like history in general, and the annual history walk for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, organised the by Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, in particular. I’ve been on a few of these walks previously, and they’re always very interesting.
Robert French is a gifted tour leader, providing the perfect combination of anecdote and understanding, locating the issues of the past within a contemporary context.
Drawing upon the work of some terrific people like Gary Wotherspoon and Lex Watson, Robert really makes history “live”. Even my friend who came with me on the walk, who was somewhat sceptical about why he should get out of bed earlier on a Sunday morning, said he really enjoyed the tour.
Next year marks forty years since the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and undoubtedly there’ll be lots of commemorations (and celebrations) around the event to be held in the first week of March 2018, and rightly so. But before Mardi Gras, there was a lot of other activist activity, and so while I think Mardi Gras is important, I think it’s worth recognising the previous work of lots of others, and that’s what you learn on walks like this. Fabulous stuff.
Gay used to be such a lovely word. It used to mean such lovely things. But THEY have taken this lovely word, and THEY have made it into something horrible. I’m talking about teenagers, of course. I’m old enough, now, to have known three quite different meanings for the word “gay”. And I guess, reflective of my more mature status, these days, I’m not entirely comfortable with the negative use of the word by teenagers now.
That said, I got a little confused on the train coming back from the South Coast today. My carriage on the train was about half made up from teenagers aged between fourteen and seventeen, heading to Sydney for Mardi Gras. I actually overheard one young bloke use both modern variations of the word in the one sentence. Surely he could have gone one step further, I thought to myself, and say something like “We had such a gay time at Mardi Gras, we met this really great gay guy, but then it all turned gay” :) A linguists delight.
Central Coast float in rehearsal
“I’m just coming because he wants to”, this same young bloke explained to the others, as he pointed to his mate sitting next to him. It was fascinating to sit and listen to them chat about their lives, the universe and everything. Oh, and tattoos! The seventeen year old with the fake ID – apparently you get them from Queensland – was planning to get one later tonight. His mother will be so pleased.
I also watched them drink fruity lexia from a collective bladder. Eeek. One of the girls looked like she was peaking a bit early, with her head lolling about like the veritable “bladder on a stick”, and we hadn’t even made Sutherland. You just know she was going to be throwing up in a back lane way within a couple of hours.
Some of the many faces of Mardi Gras
Along the way, I tweeted various bits of the conversation which I overheard. “I hope my 17 yo son isn’t part of the group”, a former colleague and twitter-buddy responded in response to my tweet about the fruity lexia. I think she was concerned about the under age drinking. I was more concerned they were drinking fruity lexia :) Have you ever tasted that stuff? Although I have an almost-teenage nephew, I don’t have any teenagers in my life at the moment, and so it was quite an insight.
Thank God the Raelians were allowed to participate
I haven’t been to watch the parade for a number of years. I just don’t like the crowds anymore. But I often take a walk around the parade route before it starts, safely making it home to watch it on television (this year) or on the net (previous years).
There seemed quite a buzz on the streets tonight. With good weather, the crowds seemed quite large.
Speaking of large. My favourite scene was the group of bears who had secured a prime position to watch the parade on Oxford Street. They seemed to all be having the time of their lives. That said, I was a little worried about the balcony supports. “How many bare bears can the balcony bear?”, I thought to myself.Where I saw most of the parade from
Damo and I had a beer today at the Cronulla Club, the second time I’ve been there.
It’s a nice enough club, with a really fine outlook over the bowling green.
I’d been in Wollongong for the day for work. And rather than come all the way back into the city before heading back down, I jumped out of the car and met Damo at the club for a late afternoon bevvy.
We chatted mostly about travel, as he’s about to embark on his mega-tour of South East Asia, and I’m contemplating my own travel plans for early next year.
We also had a bite to eat at a nearby tapas placed called Stonefish, I think? You can eat well for very little money, let me assure you. You won’t go starving.
On arriving back in Sydney, I got home as quickly as I could and put on the heater.
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