..nowadays being arrested in underwear representing the flag of your host country. They don’t weigh you, no matter that you look like a beached whale and you’re being constantly towed out to sea. On they go, over-flowing the aisles and seats. This is in stark contrast to the old days when they weighed both you…
..live on stage accompanying the movie and we’d arrived far too early. I was idly fiddling with my phone when Maria nudged me. ‘Isn’t that Julia Zemiro?’ she whispered – and then had to repeat the question because the ambient foyer-noise defeated my well-meaning but quite ineffectual hearing aids. I had to do a double…
..anything at all! Anyway, it was a perfect early autumn morning when we pulled over outside the Selwyn Gallery in Darfield, a two-horse town twenty minutes west of Christchurch where the snowless Southern Alps loom over the parched Canterbury plains, this day under a blank blue sky. Unlike the other very fine galleries we’d visited…
..deliberately flouted and subverted. On the other hand this dereliction of governmental responsibility has given me ample time to attend to my inner thoughts and develop an almost Buddhist tranquillity and acceptance of the vagaries of travel. Or the absence of movement. My Zen training began in my early days of commuting. It was a…
.. take his daughter roller-skating. Out of curiosity I opened the German phrase book at random, and the first phrase that I saw was ‘Ist hier in der Nähe ein Atomkraftwerk?’ which translates as, ‘Is there an atomic power station around here?’ A curious question to ask when you come to think about it, and…
.. and ineffectually for seemingly hours. But here’s the thing. It was actually only half an hour. And here’s the other thing. Apart from me, and the people round me party to my mutterings, nobody seemed to appreciate that it was pure crap. Because then, breathtakingly, Elvis left the stage. And not only that, the…
.. to your boundary. Theoretically unlimited download and upload speed. Unless you live in what is described as a Rural or Remote area which means that there are alternatives such as radio and satellite. These give lesser, but still very adequate, speeds by today’s standards. The technology for this is well known and the first…
..the even more smoke filled proof-reading room. Do I remember him? No, but reporters had normally gone to the pub by the time that we arrived probably straight from the same hotel. Maybe our paths crossed on the way to The Gresham? Somewhat curiously I became a member of the proof-reading room through Hugh Coley…
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Rosemary Jackson had parents like chestnuts roasting by the fire. Rich accents popped out from small round bodies that had emigrated from somewhere in Middle England. Their daughter was their single joy. Rosemary was of grave demeanor with skin that merited the accolade of peaches and cream, and she had dark lustrous long hair with…
..Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. I think it’s my first ‘motion capture’ movie on the big screen, (although I’ve seen bits of Beowulf on Foxtel) and, while it’s impressively realistic in capturing movement accurately, it falls a bit flat in nearly every other respect. Having said that, the backgrounds are stupendously rich and detailed and…
S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…
S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…
..election campaign characterised by profound shallowness and intellectual mediocrity by both political parties and the media, I wrote …..“Many years ago I recollect seeing in scratchy black and white an interview between Walter Cronkite and an aging Dean Acheson who had been the Secretary of State in the Truman Administration. He had played a central…
..grimly to myself whilst checking discreetly if I’d been observed. Nobody was smirking knowingly, so I mopped myself up as best I could, extracted the wayward saucer from the bowl and continued my meal as if nothing had happened – but in truth I’d well and truly lost the vibe. That was some months ago…
S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…
..Through Road, where I alighted and the wrapper continued on its involuntary travels. I observed that the departed burger-meister had eaten everything but a solitary slice of tomato, but as to whether this was due to time constraints or simply taste preferences I was naturally unable to tell. In fact, there wasn’t much I could…
.. is no immediate evidence for this assumption. For example, there have been occasions when we’ve been playing to an apparently indifferent crowd, and yet when we’ve finished playing, a selection of those very same people has made a point of letting us know just how thrilled they were with the music. That has a…
..Rock, near the Geelong sewage outflow, to Barwon Heads. On the Saturday we went about half way along so that we could return in time for lunch and wine with friends, but on the Sunday we went the whole way there and back. Two interesting things. On the Saturday Mary had dropped one of her…