Okay, I know what it’s like over there when the All Blacks lose. I’m sure you are all feeling a bit deflated. But hey, the ref was a cock, it’s a new team and it stood up really well considering it was their first game.
And they can only get better with Justin Marshall gone.
I wandered out to Homebush to see the Aussies beat Wales but watched the main event in the bar at the Homebush Novotel. A forty minute queue for the bar and lot’s of Welsh cheering the ABs whenever there was an Englishman in hearing distance. My Aussie mate going “go you kiwi fucks” cos he hates Clive Woodward and the exciting style of rugger the Poms are developing.
The Aussies looked a bit tentative but put their game away okay. I think they could harden up dangerously in the next month. The Yappies are starting to come right too, so we could have a humdinger of a World Cup.
Anyway, I thought there were a lot of good signs from the ABs.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the bottom of the Public Address list recently. As I say, it’s a busy time over here.
I had both Girlies in residence for a week, which was great. They haven’t seen each other for six months, so day one they had a fight and stopped talking. Next day we headed up to the Hunter Valley in silence. The thaw started at lunchtime and by early afternoon we were rocking and rolling.
Did a winery, Undercliff, and bought half a dozen including a very nice “basket press” shiraz. Shirazes can be quite taninish but by using a hand press this can be reduced markedly. So it was a soft shiraz but still with that big shiraz flavour. We saw some kangaroos and a monster open cast mine and then headed down to Port Stephens for the night.
Next day we took a walk to the top of the headland, Girlies whining in unison. They don’t like walking. They like shopping. So we had lunch and headed back to Sydders.
After a long fallow period I’ve started reading a bit again – getting back into a routine from a few years ago where I read on the bus to and from work. You can really cover some ground if you do it consistently.
Anyway, I've just finished John Birmingham’s Leviathan (the unauthorised biography of Sydney) and it really is terrific and great fun. Birmo, as we call him, has an adjective for just about every historical character and brings out the fear and loathing of early colonial Sydney wonderfully well.
Obscure fact of the day: the first brewery in Sydney was highly regarded, the beer had a very distinct flavour. Little did the punters realize the water used was draining through the local cemetery.
Now I’m reading William Brandt’s The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life. Talk about a laugh! This book is genuinely funny, not witty, not humorous – funny. It would have been laugh-out-loud funny if I wasn’t reading on the bus and worried about looking a dickhead.
Here's an appropriate example: Our hero, Frederick Case-Carlisle, has broken up with his partner Sophie, who after giving the first blow job in a mainstream movie has fallen in love with the blowee.
Frederick is wandering the streets of London when he comes across a fellow kiwi, an attractive prostitute from Levin. She gives him her business card, on which she claims to be Australian.
"People don't respond to New Zealand, she explains. "Australia is more sexy."
They chat. Frederick tries to come up with marketing angles that would allow her to be kiwi - or at least South-Pacific.
They part: "She waves a saucy little goodbye. The poor thing has no idea. Talking to me she might as well be a liquor wholoesaler cultivating Saudi connections. Still, I am moved to stop and turn back and watch her go. And I feel sad. I feel such sadness. That a young woman like that, so full of promise, bright and perky, her whole life ahead of her, has sunk to such a terrible, deluded, degraded existence. Pretending to be an Australian. It's enough to make you weep."
Brandt could well be funnier than me...