The French women in my life...

"Iranian President auctioning his 1977 Peugeot 504"

This is just making me reminisce and feel nostalgic about the beautiful French ladies who have been in my life.














My father owns a beguiling orange Peugeot 504. I spent a good deal of my childhood sitting in the back seat and have also had the pleasure of taking it on a trip from Adelaide to Sydney and back. The first 504 was made in 1968 and due to its popularity and reliability the last one was made under licensed production way later in 2006! They're beautiful and sturdy and reliable and just simply brilliant.




















My first (and as yet, only) car bought by me and for me was a cute little avocado-green Renault 12 sedan which set me back 200AUD (a friend bought a Renault 12 station-wagon from the same guy for 35 bucks and it trooped on for a whole three months!). She was very pretty and I adored her. Her vinyl upholstery looked untouched and she was a pleasure to drive. The doors wouldn't lock and she had a little rust but the fuel economy was great, plus she smelled tremendous!
I sold her to a friend for 300AUD who was moving to Sydney and we (3 big men) drove her fully-laden with my friend's gear all the way there (driving through Sydney's South-Western suburbs we pulled up at the lights and a car-full of Lebanese whipper-snappers yelled 'sick mate, you lowered it!!'). The poor French girl who was built for a mild European climate almost overheated en-route and we had to drive the whole 1,500 odd kilometres with the heater on full-blast, our half-naked bodies sticking to the vinyl, the radio amplifying the revs of the engine....but we were extraordinarily happy and it was much more fun than a road-trip with the smooth, quiet, air-conditioned ride of a new-fangled automobile with DVD screens and drink-coolers.
We nicknamed her 'Ješka' and wrote a song about her which we performed once on stage while hungover as hell. She kept on keeping on for another two years or so in the care of my good friend.
She drew her last breath while attempting to freight kegs of home-made ale from Sydney to Adelaide for some ethnic festival. My friend snatched her badge for memory's sake and I believe she's resting peacefully somewhere in Gundagai. She served us well and I miss her dearly.
























The car which I was driving before hiking my arse over to Latvia was a grey manual Peugeot 505 my Dad bought for my brother and me. It's an old car but it had electric windows, power steering, and air-conditioning. I loved driving her around and I would often, if not always, take the long route anywhere just so I could saviour the simple pleasure of driving for driving's sake. I miss her too, and hope she'll still be there when, or if, I get back.



I have this feeling in my stomach which is similar to dread. I get it when I stupidly worry that while I'm away everyone is thrashing out my favourite op-shops, and I'm getting it now because I want to make sure I grow old with another gorgeous French girl in my life...it'll be okay, I hope.

Extinct Animal of the Week II

The Passenger Pigeon

"The Passenger Pigeon or Wild Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is an extinct bird, which existed in North America. It lived in enormous migratory flocks – sometimes containing more than two billion birds – that could stretch one mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long across the sky, sometimes taking several hours to pass."

Come down off the cross we could use the wood...

They've just manoeuvred the giant Jesus' head in to place in Poland. The footage reminds me of the scene in Theo Angelopoulos' epic film Ulysses' Gaze (1995) where a huge statue of Lenin has been dismantled and placed on a barge... in a striking moment, the camera watches on as Lenin's cold bust is carefully moved over the dockyards by a crane. Unfortunately I couldn't find a video of it on the net but I have posted the proceeding scene here which shows the barge slowly drifting down a canal.

This clip below is from another of Angelopoulos' films, Landscape in the Midst (1988), in which similar imagery is strikingly used; Lenin's hand is being lifted out of the water by a helicopter.

WOMADelaide line-up 2011

The line-up for next year's WOMADelaide festival (a world-music festival held over a long-weekend in Adelaide) has just come out and it's making me lament the fact that I will be on the other side of the world at the time. It seems to be a tremendous line-up of artists and I'd so love to be there, lying on the grass and enjoying the sublimity. Here's a little review of some of the artists which I would love to see (and hear):

AFRO MANDINKO (Australia/Senegal/Gambia)



I love their wonderful fusion of West African rhythms, brass, and reggae. You can download some of their songs on their website.


ANA MOURA (Portugal)



Fado on a warm afternoon under a giant fig-tree is more than I can ask for right now.


ANGUS AND JULIA STONE (Australia)




These Australian siblings are gorgeous...


ASA (Nigeria/France)



Nigerian/French 'Asa'...


DEREB THE AMBASSADOR (Ethiopia/Australia)



Originally from Ethiopia and now residing in Australia, it seems Dereb is worth a listen.



FAIZ ALI FAIZ (Pakistan)



The best qawwali singer since the late great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan they reckon.


HORACE ANDY & DUB ASANTE (Jamaica/UK)



A classic voice of Jamaican reggae..it hurts to think I'll miss him.


HANGGAI (China)



Mongolian punk musicians going back to their folk roots... spot on.


JOANNA NEWSOM (USA)



I've been in love with this little pixie's music for a while now, and have as yet not had a chance to see her live.


THE NECKS (Australia)



Minimalist experimental jazz, these guys are simply superb.

I think the new music I would find it hardest to do without, fifty years after Kind of Blue, is that produced by The Necks... A piano trio, but not like any other piano trio you have heard... There is a great deal of joy in The Necks' music, and it is the more rewarding for being hard-won... Kind of Blue's legacy is apparent in the ease with which The Necks exploit the spaces that were opened up for them all those years ago: spaces in harmony, rhythm and melody, but also spaces in the mind.

Richard Williams - 'The Blue Moment: Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' and the Remaking of Modern Music'

Find more reviews and videos here.


OMAR SOULEYMAN (Syria)



Fanging our cars around the leafy suburbs of the foothills of Adelaide in our post-pubescent years, my friends and I used to listen to home-made tapes by a guy who went by the moniker of 'Smooth Pete'. Pete had obviously got his hands on an old Casio keyboard and he'd 'rap' and 'scat' [*doo dippy dippy woo woo woo*] to a backing track... the result was obviously hilarious. Pete was either a wonderfully adept self-satirist...or just a little bit slow (...what I would pay to get my hands on a copy of one of those now long-lost cassettes!).
Although Mr. Souleyman's musical endeavours obviously require much more skill and an acquired knowledge of the folk music of Syria, it still sounds like he's using an old Casio... so I'm going to call him Smooth Omar.


TANYA TAGAQ (Canada)



Maybe not something to listen to while you're making pizza and sipping on wine after a tiresome day at work, but I wouldn't mind seeing Innuit throat singing on stage just once in my life.


THE YABU BAND (Australia)



You try finding better Aboriginal desert rock-reggae...



This is of course only a small representation of the splendour of Womadelaide...It is a bit disappointing to see Eastern Europe underrepresented again (gypsies don't count!)...

Extinct Animal of the Week I

Lord Howe Swamphen

"The Lord Howe Swamphen or White Gallinule, Porphyrio albus, was a large bird in the family Rallidae endemic to Lord Howe Island, Australia."

For a Monday morning...

Time to book a konference [sic]...

The is an advertisement for the 'Australian fine dining' restaurant called Reef n' Beef which is found in Copenhagen.


My friend was recently in Copenhagen and spotted this ad on the back of a bus. In the larger version you can see that the glass of red wine has been doctored into the Aboriginal man's hand.

Okay, I'm not even sure if I want to comment...it's pretty obviously wrong. It's culturally insensitive and ignorant, not to mention they may have used an image of a deceased person...then they've slapped it on the back of a bus to promote a restaurant!?

Ridiculous

Friday...

Writing financial news and this is helping a lot:

...

Don't wait for the Last Judgement, it takes place everyday. - Albert Camus

Remembrance

Original words by Eric Bogle:

No Man's Land

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifle fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound the Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal hear is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind the glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Sweet pages

I just went to the post office to pick up the books I had ordered through The Book Depository....looking forward to wiling away cold evenings with these:

• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (I have read this before when I was young and have good memories of it)

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (I know, I can't believe I haven't read this yet either)

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (I recently read 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and enjoyed it very much)

• Post Office by Charles Bukowski (no comment needed...I hope)

I had also ordered The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky but unfortunately it didn't arrive at the post office with the other books...

'English'

I was browsing through the website for the local publication 'The Baltic Times' (which I was considering writing for on my arrival here in Riga) and found an article about the Latvian-Hong Kong co-production film 'Amaya'.

The article, with the terrible title of 'Lithuanian and Latvian movie from Hong Kong', is so badly written I had to laugh. Here's an example of the wonderfully pithy and coherent writing:

The movie tells a story about a man whose life-style many normal human beings would like to enjoy, in case there would not be obstacles in terms of financial issues and personal obligations to other people.

I've heard from several sources that the quality of the periodical has deteriorated from what it used to be, and I understand that the writer is not a native speaker of English, but that level of English is simply unacceptable.

Oh, and please feel free to criticise my writing, I am aware that sometimes I find myself in a glass house too.

First Australians

'Sorry' was a good start, now this is a little better...



I'm hoping Australian's will have more common sense than I believe they do.

Watch the series 'The First Australians' for some frightening history.

An itch scratched...

I love second-hand, used, pre-loved - whatever you want to call it - things. When living in Adelaide I frequently enjoyed rustling through op-shops (second-hand stores, thrift stores, charity shops, hospice shops, or resale shops depending on where you're from); scouring through bookshelves, fingering through clothes racks, browsing boxes of vinyl, wide-eyed and waiting for the next exhilarating find. I had my favourite (and secret) op-shops, and the whole process of rummaging, searching, discovering, finding, purchasing and then finally enjoying was as much exciting as it was comforting. Since I've moved to the other side of the world, good op-shops are hard to find. I've visited a few second-hand clothing stores but most of them import new-ish clothes from other parts of Europe and are certainly no match to a quaint Australian charity shop run by blue-haired pensioners drinking cups of tea and asking "are you okay there dear?". I've even had to resort, God forbid, to occasionally buying some things new!
I found myself quite flustered the other day with my absence of a good second-hand 'fix' and while looking through some of the enviable finds on the blog 'I op therefore I am' I realised I needed a fix and I needed it bad. Then I remembered about this rather new charity store (a part of a larger charity organisation I gather) here in Riga called 'Otrā Elpa'. I'd been there before but never with such a big itch; and it is the closest thing to a good op-shop here in Riga, with not only clothes (admittedly a poor selection for men), but books, vinyl, and bric-a-brac. So... I quenched my thirst for pre-loved gear and it only cost me 1.50 lats (3AUD).

Here's what I got:

A Soviet-era cheese slicer...

...a Russian knitting book with the title "For you, ladies" with knitting patterns so a woman can knit her man a comfy sweater...

...a home-made wooden spoon with the date of 8-6-88 on the back and a Latvian saying on the front meaning "How bread is eaten is how a song is sung"...

...and a cassette from the heyday of cigarette advertising (1988) called "Discover the Sounds of Adventure" by Camel cigarettes...

Here's the track-list which you can listen to on-line:

- - -

SIDE ONE

The Good the Bad and the Ugly (E Morricone)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (J Williams)

Chariots of Fire (Vangelis)

Romancing the Stone (E Grant)

Eye of the Tiger (F Sullivan / J Peterik)

SIDE TWO

When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going (B Braithwaite / R Eastmond / R J Lange / B Ocean)

We Don't Need Another Hero (T Britten / G Lyle)

You Take My Breath Away (G Moroder / T Whitlock)

The Good the Bad and the Ugly (E Morricone)

- - -

I like it how 'The Good the Bad and the Ugly' features twice.

Yes please!

Reading The Australian this morning I noticed this ad in the side-bar.


Looks like I have no choice...

The Feijoa

One of my loves since childhood is gleaning fruit from the neighbourhood. When living in Australia I would often plan my route to the tram-stop on my way to Uni so I would pass the best fruit; pomegranates, figs, loquats, grapes, peaches, oranges, lilly-pilly, and of course the underrated feijoa. The feijoa is native to parts of South America but is a very popular garden tree in New Zealand and Australia. Most people, I'm assuming, outside of these places wouldn't have a clue about what a feijoa is; spell-check is convinced it's not a word (suggesting instead feisty, feint, feign and fellatio). But I assure you it's a real thing.
After moving to Adelaide when I was three years old, we settled in our first place, a pretty white bungalow in a leafy suburb. The property included a splendidly large back-yard with a loquat tree (I would gorge on the sweet yellow fruit when in season), and a small front yard with an ever so gorgeous Frangipanni shading the front verandah and an unassuming feijoa tree in the corner. When ripe, most of the fruit would just fall off the tree and be left uneaten, this was a common site around the neighbourhood. But I appreciated those little feijoas, occasionally grabbing a handful and pulling them apart to spoon or suck out the sweet innards. Since moving house over ten years ago I've had to steal feijoas from other people's trees, but that only makes them taste sweeter of course.
Anyway...the reason I'm writing so earnestly about this little green fruit is that the other day on a brisk autumn evening here in Riga, Latvia, next to the limes in my local supermarket was a pile of feijoas! They were 3.50AUD a kilogram and grown in Italy. This is a fruit which I had never seen in a shop before and definitely never expected to find anywhere near Eastern Europe; plus, I've never bought one or even imagined I would, I'd only ever picked them off someone's lawn! So I bought one and the cashier didn't know what it was, but after five minutes of confused searching for the item number I finally had in my possession a little green feijoa. The smell instantly transported me back to that Angas Rd. front garden, sitting on the grass sucking the soft flesh out of the smooth green fruit. Standing in the kitchen after returning from the supermarket I savoured the flavour once more. It tasted like a feijoa, but I don't think I'll buy them more because they'll never be as satisfying as when they are stolen from a neighbour's tree while walking to the tram-stop on a cool morning.

I found this lovely little piece from the blog 'Spleen' about how to eat a feijoa properly:

How to eat a feijoa

The feijoa is a sadly underrated fruit. We don't see it at its best in the shops, and if we grow them at home, their brief abundance is so overwhelming as to render us ungrateful.

Some people, it seems, do not know how to eat a jeifoa.

1. Address the feijoa. Admire its glossy, bumpy green skin, its ovoid form, the grey rosette that adorns its base.
2. Grasp the feijoa firmly in your non-dominant hand.
3. Slice the feijoa in half, through its equator.
4. Pause to inspect the interior. there should be a multi-lobed zone of jelly. Isn't that pretty?
5. Hold a feijoa half in your non-dominant hand, with the cut surface outwards.
6. With teaspoon, carefully scoop out the flesh and pulp. There is a happy medium between leaving edible fruit behind, and taking in the acrid lining of the skin.
7. Consume directly from the spoon.
8. Repeat 6 and 7 with remaining feijoa half.

If you are a small child, and the fruit are very ripe, you can bite off the end of the feijoa like an American sergeant with a cheap cigar, and squeeze the innards into your mouth. This method also works for passionfruit. However, this is not manners.

Image by Sandy Austin

journey...doubt...nostalgia...

From Ulysses' Gaze (1995) directed by Theo Angelopoulos and starring Harvey Keitel.