Non person

..serviced
in anticipation. I was about 10,000 k overdue, which is unusual for me but reflects
the precarious state of my income stream. I had it done here at home for the
first time by a mobile mechanic, and so far it’s all good. It was probably
half my usual cost and I know for a fact that there was more attention to detail
– he picked up that my spare tyre was utterly flat for instance, which
means it probably hasn’t been checked at all for the last few services.
After the work was done we had a cuppa and a chat, another advantage of the
at-home service. It turned out Ian had been a bass player in a rock ‘n’
roll band in his youth, so there was something we had in common that I wouldn’t
have discovered in the normal van-servicing transaction.
Thirty-odd years ago I owned an EH-Holden that had been a taxi in a former life.
I was told it had a ‘low-compression head’ as a result of its being
a taxi and that fact has stuck with me over the years as it was the only technical-sounding
thing I’ve ever known about a motor vehicle I’ve owned. That and
that the registration plate was JWL 666. I’ve wondered from time to time
if I’d inadvertently had a pact with the devil by virtue of that plate
and that having a No. 1 hit single was perhaps part of the deal, but on a recent
QI episode, (well, recent for here anyway), Stephen Fry explained that 666 was
not the devil’s number after all. Maybe the actual number was 616, but
you wonder if that news comes a little late and that 666 might now actually
be the devil’s number by popular acclaim, in much in the same way as the
English language evolves – or devolves.
When you travel interstate, or any distance for that matter, you’re bombarded
with signage along the way telling you that ‘drowsy drivers die’
and ‘a nano-nap can kill you’ etc. I wonder if these messages aren’t
in fact counter-productive. Seeing the words ‘rest’ ‘drowsy’
and ‘sleep’ over and over again, despite the negative context, could
very well have a cumulative ‘ironic’ effect. In fact, I’m
sure there has been some research done quite recently on anti-smoking ads which
has come to that very conclusion. (Ah yes – Master Brian
Earp of Oxford University)
It’s only a matter of time then before somebody, (any bets as to nationality?),
sues the state for coercing them into contracting lung cancer by telling them
not to smoke, or going to sleep at the wheel because of signs advising them
not to.
I was very fortunate to be taken to the Vienna:
Art and Design exhibition at the NGV last week. Although I did a year of
graphic design at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts, (or the school of farts
as we called it), I wasn’t really paying all that much attention, but
even so I don’t think we touched on much art history. I remember some
stuff about the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier, but the Viennese school either passed
me by or I it, so I went into the exhibition with an open, if not empty, mind.
I emerged into the bright winter sun an hour or so later my head swimming with
the vision and energy of these Young (Viennese) Turks who formed the Secession
group which influenced European design and art so profoundly at the beginning
of the 20th century. Many of their ideas look like blueprints for contemporary
living and would look perfectly in place in the most contemporary architect
designed home.
We walked to Federation Square and elected to have lunch at a little Italian
joint. At the end of the meal we were asked if we’d like coffee, but we
both chose tea. The waitress advised us that the (promotional) teapots were
prone to leak and we should be careful pouring them. They were impossible to
pour without leaking as it turned out, and the handles forced your knuckles
into contact with the boiling hot pot which was darned painful. Not only that,
but the cups were so big and heavy that you needed both hands to hold onto them
as well. The irony wasn’t lost on us – centuries of dedicated and occasionally
inspirational design have led to this; an aesthetically displeasing and unfunctional
tea set at yer local pizzeria.