The songs in the second heat of Melodifestivalen 2013, the competition which chooses the Swedish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, were considerably better than those which featured in the first heat last weekend. But that’s not to say they were great songs or performances, or even potential Eurovision winners, as the comparison comes from quite a low base.
Nonetheless, there were a couple of songs which surprised me with how good they were. I really quite liked Louise Hoffsten with her country-rock inspired, appalling named “Only The Dead Fish Follow The Stream”. Felicia Olsson’s “Make Me No 1″ was a good song sung well. I loved the melody, sweet lyrics and performance by Erik Segerstedt and Tone Damli of the song “Hello Goodbye”. I’m not sure if there was much difference between the song he entered last year and the one he entered this year, but I actually quite liked Copacabanana by comedian, Sean Banan (Sean Banana). It was unexpectedly catchy, and not as annoying as it could have been, though I’m not sure if it will stand the test of repeat listening. Although I didn’t think much of the song or the performance, the choreography for Anton Ewald’s “Begging” was quite good. Disappointingly, “Swedish House Wives” (a band consisting of three well know Swedish female singers) failed to make it to the finals or the extra chance round. In some ways I’m not surprised, as the television voting tends to favour the “young and pretty” as well as the “well known”.
For me, the highight of this week’s show were the production numbers and the comedy pieces. There was a fabulous Bollywood-inspired version of the former Melodifestivalen finalist , “In The Club” by co-host Danny Saucedo. Another highlight was seeing Melodifestivalen legends, Ann-Louise Hanson, Towa Carson och Siw Malmkvist back together to perform their 2005 Melodifestivalen entry “C’est la vie”. I saw them perform at Stockholm Pride in 2011, and it was obvious from then, they’re held in deep regard in Sweden. This week, they demonstrated they were able to take the piss out of themselves by singing a number of Melodifestivalen parody songs about them being quite old, including, “In The Club” which was renamed “Bingo Hall”, and “Popular”, which became “I’m A Pensioner”.
The other funny sketch piece was based around the idea of an “ordinary” Swedish family who decide to enter the pop music world as “Swedish House Family”. The song parodied a lot of aspects of Swedish life including reversed gender stereotypes (the wife drills holes in the wall, while the husband cooks the evening meal); the wife’s apparent drinking problem, and as she vomits in the toilet, the whole family is there to support her; falling asleep in front of the television, and how everyone looks and dresses the same. Apparently.
So overall, Heat 2 was heaps better than Heat 1, though I’m still not seeing anything that rivals last year’s Melodifestivalen and Eurovision winner, “Euphoria” by Loreen.
Living so close to the Sydney Cricket Ground, I’m always consciously aware of when there’s a major sporting event or concert occurring: Cleveland Street turns into a carpark, and the pubs of Devonshire Street are always full (especially for the Sydney Test) as people make their way to and from the SCG.
Back in the day when I was still going to events like the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and Sleaze Ball (remember that?) it was great to live so close, even if you were taking your life into risk crossing South Dowling Street and ANZAC Parade.
But I discovered this morning there’s a new walkway that allows you to cross the road without risk. I’m not sure how long it’s been there for, since I haven’t walked this way in a few months, but it looks new.
The Albert Tibby Cotter WalkwayThe Albert Tibby Cotter Walkway
The Albert Tibby Cotter WalkwayAs I went about my morning walk, I also noticed there was a development application sign all over a nearby group of terrace houses which have been empty since construction of the light rail commenced. Oh no, they’re going to pull them down and put up apartments, I thought to myself. Pleasingly, they’re planning to renovate the balconies, and give them a lick of paint, which is good to hear.
Meanwhile, I note City of Sydney have been out and about putting stickers on dirty garbage bins and furniture left in the back laneway.
Clearly, Surry Hills is undergoing its latest transformation.
Due to my long-term involvement in the “ABBA Fan Community”, I’ve met people from all over the world. Last year for example as I travelled around Europe I met Marco and Sandra in the Netherlands, and caught up with David (France) and Gustav (Sweden). It’s a part of my life which, I guess sounds a bit odd to a lot of people, but it’s really enriched my life in many ways. And today I met Mikey, who would have to be one of the loveliest ABBA fans I have ever met. Originally from the United States, but now living in the Middle East, he has been visiting Australia for the last couple of weeks.
And today, a group of ABBA fans, united through our membership of ABBAMAIL (and now ABBA Village) got together with him for a drink or two, or twelve. We kept ourselves nice, I swear. The venue was the Central Hotel, a newly opened pub near Central Station. The bar staff are great. The food tastes great and is well-priced. And most importantly, they have regularly priced beers. $10 jugs. Although I suspect it’s mostly subsidised by the poker machine room upstairs, it’s great to find a local pub that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg.
Mikey arrived early, not realising/forgetting (?) Sydney and Adelaide (where he had just been), were on different time zones. And so for a while it was just Graeme, Mikey and I have a chat. And guess what? Mikey is very very charming. He can hold a good conversation. And he seems genuinely interested in and excited about life, the world and all it has to offer. It was a real pleasure to meet him today. I don’t have much else to say about day, except it was really great fun.
“I’m not sure I can make it all the way to the midnight fireworks”, I said to my friend Kate, as we spoke earlier today about plans for New Year’s Eve in Sydney, where we have tickets to the celebration at Barrangaroo. “Don’t worry”, she said, “I’ll bring a blanket, and if we need to, we can have a little nap”.
In some ways, that whole conversation was emblematic of where I find myself at the end of 2017. I’m not the “young man” who started this blog almost sixteen years ago. That said, “there’s plenty of life in the old girl yet”. But I am ending the year in a reflective mode, thinking about where I am right now, and where I’ll be for the “later years” of my life.
I’m back in Sydney after a few days in Lismore, visiting my family. And part of this “end of year reflection” relates to the trip home, as family members are getting older and older. I’m not sure how long some of them will be around for. I love them all very much (except for my nephew, who continues to cause my family grief), but I’m not quite ready to “return home” just yet. I still feel like Sydney is the place for me to be.
I doubt I’ll retire in Sydney (I don’t think I can afford it), and I doubt I’ll retire in a small country town (lacking some of the creature comforts of city-life I’ve become used to), so maybe it’s somewhere in between. Maybe it’s Newcastle? Maybe it’s Canberra? Could it be Hobart? Maybe it’s Lismore?
One thing I’m sure of, is that if I do retire in Lismore, it will be somewhere “on the hill”.
“The further up the hill you lived, the more money you had; the better school you went to; and the less you had to worry about floods…”, was how I once described to a colleague the “class system” in Lismore (my hometown in Northern NSW). She, too, had grown up during the 60s and 70s in a working-class Catholic family, albeit in Brisbane, but agreed, “Yes Catholics spend their entire lives trying to make it to the top of the hill”.
I wrote a few days ago.
And this year, it became very evident to me with the floods in Lismore which reached the top steps, and into the homes of a number of family members. As I wrote at the time:
“Yeah the river’s up, but it’s nothing to worry about”, I’ve often said to my family previously. They usually rely on me for forecasts, interpretations from the SES/Weather Bureau etc. And for the most part, I tell them not to worry. But this time around. when it was clear about how bad things could be, I told them to worry. I was especially concerned for my older family members. They might have lived through floods in 1954 and 1974, and it was all okay, but this time around, they’re in their 60s and 70s, and no longer as able to move around as much.
The water almost entered Nancy’s house on Union Street, South Lismore, as viewed from Pat’s place.
In explaining my own feelings, I went part of the way on the radio show I present, Editor’s Choice, introducing some interviews from some people from home.
This time a week ago my members of my family were surrounded by about six feet of water. It was, literally, lapping their floor boards. They live in South Lismore, and that’s where I grew up, too.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of the 1974 flood. I remember. It was Sunday night, I was 8 years old, and my dad and I went down the backyard, and knowing a flood was on the way, we went under the house to secure the washing machine in case it floated away, and next door, to secure our car on what we thought was higher ground. We went upstairs, watched the Wonderful World Of Disney, and by the time, the show was over, our house too was surrounded by water.
Before that, my mum and dad told me stories of the 1954 flood, of living in a low-set house, where the water reached the top of the windows, and they lived in the rooftop for four or five days. Mum, dad, my four sisters, my granny, and my uncle. This was the days before the State Emergency Service, when hundreds of people in the area died from drowning.
And now it’s happened again, as Lismore, and many other parts of Australia have either experienced major floods, or have succumbed to Cyclone Debbie. We start this week’s Editor’s Choice, with some of the experiences of the people of just one town, my home town, South Lismore, in these recordings from Samantha Turnbull from ABC Radio in Lismore.
I even went on the radio as an “emergency broadcaster” As the team at ABC Radio in Lismore took a break “before the worst of it”, I filled in, remotely from Sydney. Because I know the area very well, and because I know what it’s like to live through a flood, I did the late shift from 11pm to 2am, when they took over again. There was a moment of complete realisation for me, as I spoke to the bloke from the SES who told me how serious the problem was.
But in the midst of it all, there was also a moment of joy, as a former school teacher, Barbara Kearney called in to say “hello”.
The floods, and the risk to family, affected me very deeply, in a way I didn’t expect.
South Lismore in flood, courtesy ABC with three family homes in view.
In stark contrast, it’s also been a terrific year for overseas holidays.
In May I went to Stockholm again. It was my sixth trip to Stockholm in less than ten years, to a city I love very much. And if the ABC ever kicked me out with a golden handshake, I’d be there in “two shakes of a lambs tail”, as my dad used to say.
It was a really wonderful holiday, and I especially enjoyed the times I caught with people I have come to know there, and a real deepening of our friendships.
And then In October, Sue and I also travelled overseas, to Spain.
Currently, I have two overseas holidays in mind for next year: my friend Sandra is one of the organisers of the Stockholm Writers Festival, and my friend Kate is holding an exhibition in China. I’m not sure I’ll make it to Sweden, but the trip to China is definitely on my agenda, with cheap flights and accommodation making it a viable option.
This year I’ve also travelled a bit with work, with extended stays in Canberra and Hobart. Both visits involved time for reflection about life outside of Sydney.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to go and live in Hobart?”, a friend said to me, jokingly, over dinner the other night, adding “Everyone I know says they want to live in Hobart”. “I don’t think so”, I told her, “but I wouldn’t rule it out”. A nice combination of the two “worlds” of my life: that of living in a big city like Sydney, as well as a series of smaller country towns in my earlier life.
As I reflect back on 2017, one of the most fantastic things I’ve been involved in this year has been a story-telling project called Surry Hills & Valleys. As I wrote previously…
A few months ago a friend and I got together over dinner at a restaurant in Surry Hills. Compared with many, I’m a long-term local, whereas she is a reasonably new arrival, but with a passion for the suburb in which we live. And a common concern, that as Surry Hills goes through the latest transformation, some sense of “community” may be lost along the way.
As we spoke, we became consciously aware that many of the “stories” of Surry Hills go back to the days of Ruth Park novels, and 1930s gangsters. What about life now? We discussed the idea of story-telling as a way to unite the community in a modern way. There are so many interesting people living here today, and we thought it would be great to capture their stories. Along the way, we’ve enlisted some others with a similar passion. We “launched” at the end of August, and largely due to the very hard work of Karina and Tim, we now have close to thirty profiles of people who live locally. (I have contributed a couple of ideas, but mostly I’m the web guy). I love reading the stories, and hope you might also check them out also.
Since launching, a few of our profiles have also appeared in Urban Village, our local newspaper. We’ve also discussed ways in which these stories might also be more widely shared. Stay tuned! Please take a look, follow/subscribe etc at https://surryhillsandvalleys.com/
Throughout the year, it was lovely to catch up with my friends and family here, as well as interstate and overseas friends, including Sandra and Robert, Nikki and Roger, and Mattias (Sweden), to finally meet Matthew (Melbourne), and to catch up with my old university friend, Cathy, who haven’t seen in “donkeys years”.
Though it seems not as many people blog these days, I really love reading the stories of people online. As I wrote in May, on the occasion of my fifteenth anniversary of this blog…
Over the years, I’ve watched bloggers come and go, and have been grateful to have been given an insight into their lives. From the early days, I think Carol is the only one still consistently blogging. We actually met “in real life” a few years ago in unexpected circumstances, attending the same work-related event. In real life, I talk to Redsultana a few times every week. Through this blog I’ve also met Sandra, who I will be seeing her in Stockholm in a few weeks, and have introduced her to three of my real life friends also. I enjoy reading the regular postings of Victor, Neil and Andrew (though I sometimes skim some of his posts when he gets a little “grumpy old man”). I mean that in a nice way, Andrew, by the way. From early Blog meetups WittyKnitter and I occasionally swap tweets, though I’ve almost completely lost touch with Papertrap, whose blog no longer exists. Peter from Amsterdam has also stopped blogging, though I have fond memories of meeting him there a few years ago. I could go on, though of course, I’d miss mentioning someone, one of my “imaginary internet friends” (as Carol calls them), and I wouldn’t want to do so. They’ve all shared bits and pieces of their lives with me over the years.
So in short, I’m ending 2017 feeling okay about where I am in life, though somewhat reflective, and wondering about where I’ll be, and what I’ll be doing in 2027.
In 2005, in controversial circumstances, Sweden chose Martin Stenmarck with his song “Las Vegas” (which I liked a lot) over Nanne Grönvall with her song “Håll om mig” (which I liked a lot more). Nanne had the popular vote (chosen by viewers), but was trumped by Martin who had the jury vote (chosen by a group of experts). There was a public outcry over the result, and the rules surrounding Melodifestivalen have since changed.
Nanne is a fantastic performer who I’ve seen perform on a few occasions and actually met once at a shopping centre performance in Stockholm. She comes from Swedish pop music “royalty” as her father-in-Iaw is Benny Andersson from ABBA.
I shot this clip at Stockholm’s Paradise nightclub. I’d seen her perform on DVD and Youtube, but I was absolutely blown away by her life performance. She sings wonderfully, and with incredible passion, and there’s a bit of the Tina Turner in her dance style.
And she SHOULD have represented Sweden in Eurovision in 2005!
It’s Saturday lunchtime and I’m at work for two reasons. First, I had to make a few arrangements, face to face, with one of the presenters. Second, it’s SOOOOOO BLOOOOOOODY HUUUUUMID. I’m not sure what the actual humidity reading is, but speaking with some people here at work, they’ve told me the weather today is very strange… a bit like the “build-up”.
Should I explain the “build-up”? Although aboriginal people in the area have identified up to eight seasons in the Top End (and the Top End refers only to one part of the Northern Territory, not the whole of the NT), white folk here usually just refer to the “wet season”, the “dry season” and the “build up”. While the Dry season is near perfect, with temperatures above 30 every day and not a rain cloud in site, the Wet Season is probably more of an acquired taste. During the Wet season temperatures get a bit higher but, more importantly, the humidity rises sharply. Most locals say the “build up” is the worst. From October to the end of December the heat builds up along with the humidity. Storm clouds form, but very rarely is there any rain. If I can be a little sexual for a moment… it’s like your mother walking into your room when you’re on the verge of an orgasm.
Went out for a drink last night with Penny and a guy called Keith. Keith also lives in my apartment block on Level 8, which, he tells me, is the same level as the brothel! So yes, I was right about prostitution.
Also went to the other local bar, “Throb”, which was a little more exciting than the “Mississippi Queen”. Lots more people and friendlier too. I’ll write a more complete review when I have time.
I’m off for some lunch and then to do the War Tunnels tour that Damien and I didn’t get to do last time we were here.
This week has been both enjoyable and challenging.
I’ve experienced significant fatigue, which has been happening most days, likely due to the combined effects of my previous amputation and the recent hip replacement. While everyone assures me I’m recovering well, I feel frustrated by what I perceive as my slow progress.
Today, at the Surry Hills Streets Festival with friends Andrea and Ross, I told a former colleague we ran into I feel like I’ve regressed about 18 months. All the progress I made walking without crutches after the amputation feels undone. Even simple outings, like walking with a friend a few hundred metres up the street on Thursday, have left me utterly exhausted.
The festival was lovely, but I could only walk about 100 metres before needing to rest. Despite pacing myself, I was drained by the end. My friends were incredibly understanding and helpful and amazing, but the personal frustration remains. I feel like I should be getting around like I was before the hip replacement.
One colleague we ran into at the festival praised my ‘get on with it’ attitude. While I appreciate the compliment, I need to be honest about my “down” moments, and there have been a couple this week. Despite enjoying this week’s experiences, I’m feeling disheartened by my perceived lack of mobility progress. I know I’m likely putting too much pressure on myself, but it’s hard to ignore.
Returning to work, two days in the office and one at home, was also taxing. Public transport is still too much, so I caught a couple of Ubers.
Street performers at the Surry Steets FestivalThe street performers were great fun. One of them was handing out cards with obscure words. Thought this one might give you a smile, and come in handy!Today, my “Stay Strong Lismore” t-shirt became an opening for lots of conversations at the Surry Hills Street Festival. It led me to discover, for example, a young bloke named Robertson, working at the local Vinnies I shop at, hails from Lismore. I’m looking forward to calling in to say g’day when he’s in the shop later in the week. Michelle – maybe when you are here? I also stopped by the Village Voices exhibition. For about 10 years now, the words of local people have been displayed on a piece of public art, including some of my words about Lismore. The response is always positive when I wear the shirt with lots of people stopping me to ask “how are things going up there?” So friends and family back home, rest assured many people still care.
Furthermore this week, my prosthetist confirmed my physio’s observation: my legs were uneven in length since the hip replacement. This is apparently a common issue, especially for people with amputations. He took a few measurements, got me to walk up and down a few times, pulled out the necessary tools adjusted my prosthesis, and my gait has improved.
Adding to my efforts to improve my mobility, on Tuesday I will be test driving some mobility scooters. In fact, while walking along the street the other night, I stopped a stranger whose scooter caught my eye and asked him about its price, stability, and other details, which he kindly shared.
Looking ahead, my niece is visiting this week, which I’m excited about. We have plans for lunch, a harbour cruise, and a comedy show. However, I anticipate needing rest days between activities. I also have some work commitments to balance.
