Ho ho ho ho......

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year! I apologise for my slack blogging these last two months. Obviously I was away in November and December has been silly season where I've barely had time to put finger to keyboard. I'm hoping to have more time to write in January.....mainly because I intend not to eat or drink and thus will have much more time on my hands. I take off tomorrow afternoon for ten glorious days in the South Pacific to spend a very cOlin christmas with my brother and parents. Yes ten days with my family on Norfolk Island...one of the most remote islands in the Pacific. I'm still trying to work out whether that's a good thing or not....I will know by tomorrow night! Norfolk only received mobile phone coverage and the internet two months ago; scarey! Thank god though... I won't be completely on my own then! So hopefully I will get to do some blogging from there.

Merry Xmas everyone and here comes 2009 whether we like it or not!

Cxxxx

PS: I am also finding it absolutely intriging that I am taking more luggage on a ten day trip than I did on my five week holiday to the UK. Why?

UK And Away.....

The last few weeks I've been sitting around trying to work out how to write about my month away. It's been difficult to sum it up without sounding like an advertisement for laundry liquid. It was amazing! It was fantastic! My colours are now brighter than bright! And my whites are now generating their own electricity.

I had a great time; as a result all stories from my time are all rather boring. There were no disasters, me losing my wallet, my passport or my mind. There weren't even really many odd "did that just happen?" moments along the way; apart from the time when I arrived for my luggage at Heathrow and I was surrounded by orthodox Jews looking at me very suspiciously in my black fedora. I was right….it did make me look like Yentl.

I had been to the UK before but I had never spent a great deal of time there, choosing to bypass it for Europe. The point of this trip was to actually to stay more than two days in London and explore the rest of the UK. I spent the first ten days in London staying at the Arran House Hotel in Bloomsbury just off Tottencourt Road and ten minutes walk from Soho and the West End. The hotel, like most Bed & Breakfasts in London, was in an old city mansion. It was clean, crisp and appeared to be straight off the set of Upstairs Downstairs all except that the South African manager would often fight with the Eastern European help. There were often arguments over the way the Ukrainian chef prepared the English breakfast buffet. I loved the breakfast…..in fact it was the best breakfast I had throughout the Union but the South African thought otherwise. There would be a fight every morning over the way the tomatoes were cooked and the mushrooms displayed. It was like watching a Prussian Antipodean version of Love Thy Neighbour.

As I said in my entry, Ten Random Moments in London, the best part of this city is the people watching. And that's what I did most of the time. From the lady in her late 60s trying to explain in very bad French the wonders of sitting in front of a photosynthesis machine each morning to her very confused French friends to Mary giving advice in her broadest Belfast accent to Leonie on how to leave her husband; I think there is a different accent in London every two minutes. Coming from such a mono-lingual country such as Australia, it is a vocal feast.

So where to start….well I think I will break it into five categories

1. Entertainment
2. Catching up
3. Nightlife
4. On the Road Again
5. Encore





Entertainment

1. Dame Edna Experience: Royal Vauxhall Tavern on a Sunday Night.

· I've heard about the Dame Edna Experience for years and I missed it the last time I was in London. I finally got to see it. It is the best Cabaret I have seen in years …..and yes better than Dame Edna herself. I have never laughed so much in my life. The RVT is one of the few buildings that survived the blitz in Vauxhall and inside it is shaped like an old fashioned cabaret theatre. It had a real vaudeville feel and with it jampacked with hundreds of screaming queens…the atmosphere was electric.

2. La Cage aux Folles ( Musical) at the Playhouse :

This is one of my favourite shows (book by my hero, Harvey Fierstein) but I've never had the opportunity to see it staged. Based on a french play, the musical focuses on a gay couple: Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his star attraction - and the adventures that ensue when Georges' son brings home his fiancée's ultra-conservative parents to meet them. The show's best known song performed by countless drag queens all over the world is " I am What I Am" and the story line was famously adapted in the movie The Bird Cage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

I loved the production; it was good old fashioned cabaret romp with more double entendres than twists and turns. If you're in London, I thoroughly recommend it.

3.Goldfrapp: Brixton Academy:

This was an unexpected surprise. Frenchi asked if I wanted to come with him and a girlfriend of his. To be honest I only knew one Goldfrapp song, Blackcherry which I have played numerous times after a rather large weekend. It turned out though I actually knew a lot more of their songs than I thought……I knew half the set played that night. There was such a great vibe. Alison Goldfrapp is a rock goddess…she kept reminding me of Stevie Nicks. This combined with art décor magnificence of the Brixton Academy, the concert was absolutely sensational.

I was a little embarassed though when I claimed to Frenchi that the band was doing a Blondie cover when they broke into the song "I'm In Love"

Frenchi : "No it's a Goldfrapp song….just sounds like Blondie"

Determined to keep digging that hole.

Me: "No this is Blondie."

French: " Just sounds like them"

The song then veered away from what sounded like 'Rapture'

I then realised I was completely wrong. His parisian girlfriend looked at me as if I had a second head. I tried to find an available opening in the earth to swallow my embaraassment. Frenchi laughed and gave me a big kiss.

It was a great first date.

PIAF :

This play/musical of Edif Piaf's life has been produced all over the world winning awards everywhere it has appeared. Sadly I missed Caroline O'Connor in the Australian production a number of years ago. Most likely due to the biopic La Vie En Rose earlier this year on Edith Piaf's life, the play has been revived in London starring Argentinian musical theatre star, Elena Roger who got her big break playing Eva Peron in the UK and Argentinian revivals of Evita. I enjoyed the production but didn't love it. The music is fantastic and Roger sounds eerily like Piaf when she sings; it's unfortunately when she opens her mouth to speak dialogue that she doesn't. Her strong Argentinian accent makes her Edith sound more like a Colombian drug lord than the famous french sparrow. That aside, it's worth seeing the production just for Roger's singing Piaf.


WICKED: The Musical at the Apollo

This Broadway musical has been wildly successful since it's opening on Broadway some five years ago. I remember I was actually in New York the week it opened but I opted to go and see Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz instead. Even though The Boy From Oz was largely slammed by the critics and has long since closed on Broadway, after seeing Wicked on the Westend, I'm still glad I saw The Boy From Oz first. Wicked is essentially a prequel and tells the story of the unlikely friendship between Glinda the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West all before some girl from Kansas fell down in her farmhouse killing the Wicked Witch of the East ( West's sister). I LOVED the story and I definitely am going to read the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire on which the musical is based. The actual music though I found a bit 90s talent show. The only song that had me hooked was "Popular" by Glinda. The rest of the songs were quite vacuous. The dialogue in between and of course the actual story is what saves the production. It's fast and snappy….like an episode of Will and Grace. Being a musical though the songs do dominate…and not in a good way; it had me thinking that in the movie version Beyonce will play the Wicked Witch of the West and Britney will play Glinda. Need I say more.

More of my travels to come soon…..

C

Sunday Melodies

Phone five minutes ago.....

Me : what did we do before text messages?

Judy: Told the truth.

C

Scenes from a Dulwich Balcony

Dinner Party

My Place

Hills of Dulwich

Saturday night

9.15

Trev: So I met this girl last night who thought I was 28...

Judy: Was she with a goldren retriever in a leather harness?


Cxxx

SIGNING CEREMONY

This poem appeared in last week's New Yorker and I love it. It's by Clive James....am not sure whether it is the CLIVE JAMES as in the famous expat Australian writer/humorist and entertainer who lives in London.

The lilac peak of Etna dribbles pink,
Visibly seething in the politest way.
The shallow vodka cocktails that we sink
Here on the terrace at the close of day

Are spreading numb delight as they go down
Their syrup mirrors the way lava flows:
It's just a show, it might take over town,
Sometimes the Cyclops, from his foxhole, throws

Rock at Ulysses. But regard the lake
Of moonlight on the water, stretching east
Almost to Italy. The love we make
Tonight might be our last, but this, at least,

Is one romantic setting, am I right?
Cypresses draped in bouganvillea,
The massed petunias, the soft warm night,
That streak of candy floss. And you, my star,

Still walking the stone alleys with the grace
Of forty years ago. Don't laugh at me
For saying dumb things. Just look at this place
Time was more friend to us then enemy,

And soon enough this backdrop will go dark
Again. The spill of neon cream will cool,
The crater waiting years for the next spark
Of inspiration, since the only rule

Governing history is that it goes on
There is no rhythm of events, they just
Succeed each other. Soon, we will be gone,
And that volcano, if and when it must,

Will flood the slope with lip gloss brough to boil
For other lovers who come here to spend
One last, late, slap-up week in suntan oil,
Their years together winding to an end.

With any luck, they'll see what we have seen:
Not just, the picture postcard, but the splash
Of fire, and know this flowering soil has been
Made rich by an inheritance of ash.

Only because it's violent to the core
The world grows gardens. Out of earth we came,
To earth we shall return. But first, one more
Of these, delicious echoes of the flame

That drives the long life all should have, yet few
Are granted as we were. It wasn't fair?
Of course it wasn't. But which of us knew,
To start with, that the other would be there,

One step away, for all the time it took
To come this far and see a mountain cry
Hot tears, as if our names, signed in the book
Of marriage, were still burning in the sky?

RIM

This morning 9am in a non-descript training room covered in fluoresence and bad carpet somewhere in the CBD.

I sat.

The IT trainer entered the room. He resembled a hamburger in a suit sweating from every pore.

"Hello and welcome to RIM training."

The trainer remained deadpanned as he pointed to the words on the whiteboard:

"RIM : Records Information Management or as I like to call it ....rimming."

I searched the training room for a hidden camera or some sort of hearing device; this had to be a joke right? What was it? Catch Out The Homosexual?

The entirely "straight" class continued to look "straight" ahead without a flinch as Mr Hamburger "rimmed" his way through the seminar.

Our organisation has a new data management system and it's called RIM.

There has got to be a homosexual somewhere in IT who is having the biggest laugh on this.

I cannot wait for the posters.

Cxx

Jet Lag Vision

I’ve managed to survive my first day back at work mainly nodding politely and looking concerned at my pc at the appropriate times. Apart from that I have been rendered incapable of doing little else. Jet lag tends to turn my brain into a giant empty drum with all vision becoming peri-scoped and subsequent sounds into Dolby surround reverberations. The effect is that everyone seems to sound like they’re talking under water in an IMAX production. I always dread coming back to work after a considerable break as I usually expect time bombs that I have overlooked to be fully exploded for all of management to see. Thankfully there never have been and today was another example. My assistant nonetheless had five thousand questions for me regarding dozens of matters to which I had a continually replayed response of “can we deal with that tomorrow?” That woman should be made a saint for her resilient tolerance of my entrenched vagueness.

The government agency I work for is moving to new premises in 2010 and today the executive staff of my team had a meeting with the architect to confirm our approval of the space we will occupy in the development. Not that it really matters whether we object or not, management will move us in regardless; it’s just another tick in the box. I was quite happy to go along though as watching an architect dressed in designer jeans and check shirt (why do architects always wear these items?) fluff around an office model was quite suited to my jetlagged state of mind. That was until I walked in the door.

Dressed in his check shirt and designer jeans was P……with gold necklace and a mince in his walk you couldn’t step over.

P : Oh my god Colin!.........(in a voice that would challenge Liberace’s in the battle for Camp God)

I recognised the voice straight away (a mute would) and bolted upright in my chair.

Colin: Hi….

I couldn’t remember his name but I did remember him. We met one very drunken night at Phoenix when I first moved to Sydney about 8 years ago. I’d like to say I was left stranded by friends in extreme inebriation. The truth is I had no friends at the time and was completely inebriated and completely on my own. I stumbled across P on the dance floor. Under the Phoenix lights like myself and many others, P looked like a god, in the harsh light of his mood lit apartment, he looked more like an understudy for Albin in La Cage aux Folles. He wore a brunch coat and cooked me breakfast. I wanted to escape but the sex was so good, I stayed all weekend.

He rang for me for weeks afterwards (this was before texts…when people actually did call each other) and I completely ignored him. He was great sex but I wasn’t going to date Ethel Merman. I had not seen him since until this afternoon which considering how small the scene is in Sydney is odd.

P: You’re a lawyer right? I remember you saying you were a lawyer.

As he is saying this, others from my team are milling into the meeting room trying to work out and no doubt cottoning onto how P and I know each other. I felt like a cat under a sprinkler.

P: Now that I know you are in this team, I will take special care to make sure everything is right.

There were more raised eyebrows in that room than a Bette Davis film.

If I hadn’t been on London time, in a tunnel, in an underwater imax conundrum, I may have been able to deal with it and cracked a couple of one liners to take the attention off the fact that most of my colleagues realized that I had shagged Mr Ethel Architect. All I could do though was smile politely and explain that I was still in Jetlag land.

I can’t wait for the emails tomorrow.

C

I'm BACK!

Well I can't believe I am back. It seems like yesterday that I was boarding that Air Korea (the Pepsicola Airline) flight for the mother country. I arrived yesterday morning and am back at work today….although I emphasize the word physically…most definitely not mentally. I'm still in a cosy café in East London sipping on a milky coffee perusing The Guardian and pretending not to look at Frenchi as he munches his toast. I have had an incredible four weeks away. I fell in love with London amongst other things. I am still in a jet-lagged fog at the moment so am not capable of writing much other than to announce my re-entry into blogworld. I have missed blogging but at the same time, it's been nice to have a break. A great deal has happened on the world stage since I went away; some predicted (Obama), some tragically not (Mumbai) and some feared (Proposition 8). So I have plenty to write about as well as lots of blog reading to catch up with. I will write of my adventures in the coming days.

C