Space: the gaps between the words in this blog. These are the voyages of the
Starship Boobyprize. It’s continuing mission: to explore strange new feelings of
total inadequacy, to seek out new concert gigs and intellligent life forms (tautology)
and to boldly refuse to go anywhere we don’t want to.........
Captain’s Log : Stardate 2011 & 11/12ths......we are now 3478 light years from reality and have just spent the last 6 months passing through the Apathy Star System, a slow and lengthy journey owing to a failure in our Totally Warped Speed Drive, and have now entered the Santa Quadrant en route to the Delta Goodrem Sector, where we hope to pick up some tips regarding professionalism in music, plus an application form for “The X-Factor 2012” and a couple of beers...........
Well, it’s a bit different from the usual “Hi Folks,” the way I usually start the Bogleblog, although not nearly as witty.....
So, what’s been happening in the Apathy Star System over the last few parsecs?
Let’s blast off and find out.......
We last left you when we were cruising through the Blind Optimism Neutral Zone (and I think that’s it for the laboured Star Trek jokes). We’d just finished playing at the National Folk Festival in Canberra and had returned home to Adelaide to have afew weeks off and squander our hard-earned touring profits on luxuries like food and mortgage payments.
Then at the beginning of June, John, Pete and I headed off to The Snowy Mountains Festival in NSW. A new one for us all this festival, and certainly the most different festival I’ve ever attended. Now, when I left Scotland in 1969, I swore that, until the Stewarts sat once more on the throne of Scotland, I’d never again get within a 100 square miles of any snow, but there I was, up to my arse once more in the freezing stuff. How often are solemn, binding oaths betrayed by the lure of filthy lucre.......freezing it might have been, but incredibly beautiful as well. Here are some photos from the festival:
Our Hotel at The festival, the Sundeck Lodge, the highest hotel in Australia
View of Perisher Valley from our hotel.
Three Brass Monkeys.....Pete, me, John....
I was pretty crook for the first day of the festival, had a touch of altitude sickness believe it or not. I’ve got diabetes 2, and apparently people with diabetes are more prone to altitiude sickness. I had to get my sugar levels up quickly, so started putting a couple of spoonfuls of sugar in my glasses of malt whisky. Seemed to work........
The festival was certainly enjoyed by most who attended, I managed to have a pretty good time myself, although I couldn’t get as enthusiastic about the snow as most of the Aussies at the festival were, they love snow the Aussies....poor deluded fools......I’d certainly go back to the Snowy Festival, providing that they switch it to the Summer of course.......
Our next major foray into the magic world of Arts and Culture was an August tour of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. Only 10 concerts in total (or was it eight?) but a most enjoyable little tour, we had a lot of laughs along the way and managed to play some half-decent music. I must admit it’s a real pleasure touring with Emma John and Peter, I only wish I was in a position to pay them more money, but it’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime.
The only small drama of the tour was when we drove from Tamworth to Maryborough, a journey that should have taken around 3 hours but ended up taking about 9 hours. That’s what happens when you put your faith in Google maps.... we got totally lost, and ended up driving over the Barrington Tops (which we certainly shouldn’t have been!), a fairly wild and isolated national park
area in NSW. We were only saved by a little red dot on Emma’s iPhone that kept telling us that, although we were geographically challenged dickheads, it would lead us out of the wilderness to civilisation and safety. And so it came to pass...........Technology has it’s uses, no doubt about that. It still mainly frightens the shit out of me though. I suppose it’s human nature to be frightened of something you don’t understand, or can’t grasp, and my basic comprehension
of how technology works starts and ends with the wheel.......
Here are a few photos of that wee tour, personally selected by the web master for their artistic merit and illustrative nature....or maybe it’s because they’re the only ones we took.....
Serious musicians @ Gympie Music Muster
ABC Radio inTamworth
Our sound engineer Ray Beaton and his dad
Feeding time at one of the many motels we stayed in.
And that was about it for the musical side of 2011. We had a couple of local concerts in Adelaide September and October, but now we’re just hunkering down waiting for the horrors of the festive season to arrive and bludgeon us into submission once more. The fight with Optus over their proposed mobile phone tower to be located just over our back fence, which I referred to in my
last blog, goes on. The local council actually refused them permission to erect the tower, but of course Optus appealed, they know that if they can get it to the stage where they can drag us into court that their money and hired legal gunslingers will probably win the day. The fight goes on though, we haven’t given up yet, and there are still a few avenues open to us. We might beat the corporate shitheads yet......
On a personal note, I won’t be sorry to see the back of 2011, it was a curate’s egg of a year really. Some good, but a lot that was less so....I suppose you reach a certain age where the casualty lists start getting longer, and I think I’ve reached it. Lost a few family and friends this year, and a fair few who remain are now numbered amongst the walking wounded. It’s not just family and friends either, although their loss is undoubtedly the most painful and personal ones, it’s all the others who’ve been a part of your life forever, people you’ve never even met, film stars, sports stars, musicians, authors, TV personalities (tautology again), and even, God help me, journalists and politicians. All those familiar faces and voices who have been a part of your life, albeit a small part, for so long, and who are now gone.
And so the world that we grew up in and are now growing older in is a little more diminished, a little more empty....
And that’s enough of that....notwithstanding the last preceding hilarious paragraph, may I end up by wishing you and yours peace and happiness this coming festive season. I usually include a Chrismas card in my pre-festive season blog, and I’ll do so again now, but it’s a wee bit different this year, it’s a card to our much abused, much plundered, fragile and lovely home, the planet Earth....
Peace
Eric
