Anxious Wait

Wow! Will someone remind me to die before I get old? Just as Roger Daltery espoused in ‘My Generation’, that is my wish. Of course in the terms in which he was speaking (um singing) I’m already more than double old though I guess by now he, just like I, has compromised his early convictions. You don’t have to be old to be boring but it certainly helps. I just wasted $25 on Jan Preston at the Harp in Tempe. She did an impressive version of Black and White rag with dedications to Winerfred Atwell who in every respect other than being dead she wishes to emulate. It was almost as good as yours in your prime Hugh. Jan’s not bad but as we all know entertainment is all in the context. Here in Tempe playing to this apparently temperate concert style (ahem) crowd of thirty six citizens who I’m tempted to think were recruited from amongst parishioners at this mornings Methodist Tabernacle meeting. Tempered by the managerial / name on the door crowd, I would be surprised if twenty are, as I am, cash committed to having a good time and bless their bleeding hearts in these dire economic conditions $25 was probably their budget and they cannot afford a glass of happiness.

No matter how hard she tried to woo this ‘crowd’ it was never going to be the ripping hoot that I had experienced along with hundreds of other bawdy inebriates at Thredbo a few years ago. Thus it is that despite the promoters personal introduction at interval you find me here instead boring you with irrelevancies.

Continuing in this theme of irrelevancies I’m noticing an increasing trend for people to impersonate me in my rokstump blog photo, or maybe it’s Johnny Depp the pirate who knows? Fact is there are a lot of people wandering around with birds on their shoulders. Mostly parrot variations though there’s a guy in Glebe with a disastrous pigeon. I suppose if you can put up with the stench of guano it would inhibit flies and other annoying insects, but not bird lice I suppose - Mmmm major disadvantage.

Yes of course all this irrelevance is, as you perceptively saw, just my way of hiding nerves regarding the arrival of my (Great nephew whatever) next relative. Here I sit waiting on the seventeenth for a flight that I’m sure was booked some nine months ago for the sixteenth, and still there are no certain signs of take off. Man has, by this twenty first century, invented computers with clocks that know when daylight saving begins, not to mention a great deal more that I have no time for now. Women though, ah they still run in their own frustrating time frames (if frames is not too strong a word) paying no regard to mans strict schedules and frustrating all our attempts to – well - not get frustrated.

I could call Dot but she’ll be waiting by the phone for news and will think that this is it and I will only disappoint. Gott’a keep the lines clear in times like these dontch’a. My phones never been so charged and the land line is only there for telemarketers and survey services it seems. I know I won’t sleep tonight. Better have another wine.

For you my fair existing relatives living in far off barren and barbaric lands beyond the seas I have pickt a posy of flowers on my morning walk through Marrickville

Oh yes and I've nominated for membership of this club






And from my own garden this magnificent compromise to an otherwise 24/7 Buffalow