Bummer

..writ
large on it, followed by the Australian Government logo and the various logos
of the sponsoring medical-type partners along the bottom – or maybe the
sponsoring is on the other foot, it being a government project.
I guess I’m inclined to do the poo test. My sister Ann was on my case
last time we spoke as her husband has had a bowel cancer episode and early detection
played a big part in his survival. I will give a shit. (There’s
a slogan for yer).
On the other hand, this ‘gift’ from the government tells me several
things, most of them on the depressing side of the ledger. One is that I’m
on a list of old codgers around the country who are on a hiding to nothing to
contract some terminal condition at any minute, and the other is that there
is a battalion of proctologists and surgeons pulling on their latex gloves right
now in anticipation of hordes of hairy-arsed old codgers wobbling uncertainly
in their direction with their trousers down at the ready.
I’m due to have my bloody prostate checked anyway, so I may as well do
the whole basement area.
There is a remarkable correlation with ageing bodies and ageing houses. I am
blessed with two toilets in my new abode, one of which I characterise as being
mine and the other my studio guests’ as it adjoins what is now the studio.
‘My’ toilet‘s drainage pipe was leaking when I got here and
this means that ultimately the whole kit and caboodle’s going to have
to be removed and replaced, which seems like overkill when it’s only a
corroded metal grommet after all. The metaphor for my own drainage is palpable
and painful. One can only hope that the afore-mentioned bum surgeons and their
prostate specialist cousins are slightly less cavalier than their plumber counterparts.
Mind you, they charge about the same..
Onto something more cheerful. I’m just saying that mind you, because nothing
readily springs to mind. Oh well, apart from that I just had an e-mail exchange
with my NZ friend Tony Brittenden’s daughter Rowan, whose birthday it
was recently. I’d sent her a birthday e-mail, but I wasn’t overly
hopeful she’d get it, because the address seemed to be a relic from a
few years ago, and anyway, I thought I remembered Tony telling me that she’s
in Japan right now, working in the hospitality area in which, incidentally,
she’s highly qualified..
It turned out I was right – the e-mail address was an old one, but she
got my e-mail anyhow. She seemed pleased to have heard from me and so I asked
her if she was getting much practice in speaking Japanese, seeing as she was
working in one of those uniquely Japanese creations called British Hills: The
website describes British Hills as being located in a forest, 1,000 metres
above sea level in Hatori Natural Park, Fukushima. Sprawling over 59.6 acres,
you will find yourself in stylised mediaeval British town, which includes a
Manor House, a Craft House, and a guesthouse, which have been reconstructed
based on the British architectural styles between the Twelfth and Eighteenth
Centuries.
Rowan said she practised her Japanese on the kitchen and FOH staff, but most
of the time she was actually required to speak in English, and in fact the Japanese
guests are encouraged to speak in English as well according to the website.
Perhaps she’ll get more practical experience when she and a friend go
travelling round the country when her stint at British Hills is over.
If it was Rowan’s birthday, it means that it was my guitar’s birthday
too. Until my last trip to NZ my Japanese built Fender Strat didn’t have
a name, but then Rowan’s father, who’s a bit of a Fender nut, discovered
that it was built about the same time Rowan was born, so I belatedly christened
it ‘Ro’, which is doubly appropriate because I have always suspected
it was female, (Fenders are a bit like that), and furthermore Ro is Japanese
for ‘heron’, and as you know my Strat is white.
There are times playing my Strat that are utterly sublime and we are as one
in the Universe, and those moments are what makes being a musician surely the
most satisfying occupation a human being can have, especially when an audience
can share in the experience, but equally there are other moments when I may
as well be cradling a heron – but perhaps that’s another story for
another time..