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DAY 250: Wondering why people look like they do

I’VE been trying to feel more empathy for strangers by looking at what they’re wearing and wondering what went through their heads when they picked it out — and not in a horrible way.

Like, what thought old men put into their hats, and whether teenage girls are trying to emphasise helplessness when they have sleeves too long for their arms, and if snug jumpers are chosen to feel warm or to feel safe.

Of course, I could completely be wrong about their motives, hopes and desires, but the point is it’s making me put myself in other people’s shoes, even when I wouldn’t necessarily wear those shoes myself.

(NB: this is a completely different reasoning to Drawing Naked Commuters, which served no philanthropic purpose.)

On the same tack, I decide to get a portrait artist on Swanston Street to draw my picture, to see what a stranger thinks when he looks at me.

I think this looks more like me than photos do. Apart from the massive chin.

John doesn’t approve of caricaturists as, unlike him, they don’t “see the soul”. Twenty minutes and a small crowd later, he’s done. I think he’s summed up my demeanour – detached ambivalence with a small attempt at appearing polite – very well, which means I am succeeding with my facial expressions.

Keeper? Yes, will carry on questioning people’s fashion decisions.

Comments 1 Comment
Categories personality facelift, philanthropy

DAY 249: Buying some art in the street

7 May

A MAN sitting on Swanston Street has ‘4SALE’ chalked on the pavement in front of some meticulously penned drawings of buildings.

I ask him how much he is selling them for and he says you can’t put a price on art — which might mean a million bucks in his head, or it might mean nothing; so I split the difference and give him a tenner.

The story behind my picture is it’s a combination of houses that exist in his imagination.

Keeper? Might buy more things in the street.

Categories philanthropy

DAY 248: Getting inflamed by an African menu

6 May

It's supposed to hurt.

THE drinks list alone of the Nyala African Restaurant in Fitzroy is like a Shakespearean drama:

“The first cup is bitter, like life,” the menu says of the mint tea, “the second is sweet, like love; the third is gentle, like death.”

I order a coffee, which promises “passionate flavour”. If that’s not code for “even more alluringly vicious than Vietnamese coffee”, I don’t know what is.

I’ve never been to an African restaurant before – which is shameful, as Nyala’s been here for 20 years – and I’m pretty excited. The décor here’s warm and welcoming, and it smells like comfort food.

When my coffee arrives it’s thick and tarry and gives me a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. My fella’s beer smells as yeasty and syrupy as a brewery. In good ways. Sometimes you want a drink to really hurt.

Then my meal arrives, and it’s hurty spicy. The fluffy bread is lighter than celestial pancakes, and the hearty Ethiopian stew (you’ll find dishes here from all over the continent) suggests this cow has been marinading since infancy.

Look how fluffy.

Keeper? Yes.

Categories food and drink

DAY 247: Writing a murder ballad about Hamilton, then being nice to Nhill

5 May

I thought you'd prefer a picture of Victoria Hamilton than Hamilton, Victoria.

IF YOU can’t say anything nice you shouldn’t say anything at all… but there’s a town way out on the Glenelg Highway that just prompts an astonished outburst or two.

At first glance all the Colorbond fences in Hamilton lead you to believe it’s a sprawling green and orange home for the elderly, but then I go into the McDonald’s for a wash and there they all are, the real natives: hemmed in like the apocalypse has hit. Nobody walks – they shuffle. And everyone has a murderous look.

Struggling to find us some camping gear so early in the morning, the bush pirate and I circle the town and its infernal roundabout system for a good hour, taking in the disused wool sheds and careworn shop fronts with violent puns for names. Graffiti on the door of one of the public toilets says: “Fuck you I am going to kill you” in six-inch high letters, without even discriminating.

For many kays now, the bush pirate has been urging me to join him in the construction of a new Nick Cave murder ballad with a biblical bent. I’d been struck dumb by the need for coffee, but now my imagination is fired, and out comes the lurching tale of a bad son of Hamilton who slaughters people in their beds and then can’t escape himself because of woeful local signposting.

Many verses later I leave Hamilton invigorated, but the bush pirate is disquieted by my character assassination of the little town. I forget sometimes that such behaviour is considered unsporting in Australia.

In an effort to redress the balance, when we later pull into the western Victoria town of Nhill the bush pirate suggests we only say nice things.

He demonstrates by going into Coles and having a good ol’ chinwag with the checkout woman about the ridiculous price of avocados in Grampians compared to a sensible town like this. Soon enough, the elasticity returns to her face and she recounts the rigours and routines of her weekend.

Nhill is already famous.

Next it’s a stop at the bottle shop, and having overheard how lovely the bush pirate’s last conversation was, the woman behind the till is eager to have one too. Both women dig out some bargain beery buys for us, and when we leave it’s waves all round.

There are two pubs in town, and we choose the no-nonsense joint that refuses to bow and scrape to progress. The landlord seems surprised to see us – and not best pleased, as he’s watching Goodbye Mr Chips – but he rouses himself from his chair and pours us some drinks.

This pub was a snark-free zone.

Within minutes, the bush pirate’s honeyed his ear with talk of our journey and our good fortune for pulling into an honest knockabout like Nhill. Brightening, the landlord sticks money in the jukebox and picks out some Garth Brooks favourites, leaving the rest of the selection for us. The beers keep coming and the pool games are free.

We leave Nhill feeling proper restored. There’s no chance of feeling nhillistic in a town whose main employer is called Luv-a-Duck, anyway.

Keeper? Strictly speaking I was only nice-by-proxy, but now I know how it’s done I’ll give it a whirl.

Categories philanthropy

DAY 246: Experiencing great bonhomie at a glee club

4 May

It wasn't like this.

I HAVEN’T got the loveliest of timbres, truth be told, so when Esther – who provided the cynical backing track to our Heal Your Soul With Song experience – suggests we toddle off to a glee club, I’m apprehensive.

I’m picturing women in brightly coloured stockings and twee winter coats; Esther predicts gay men singing numbers from Starlight Express. Either way, when someone uses the words ‘hip’ or ‘funky’ in their online bumf, you know you’re going to have to check your pride at the door.

This glee get-together is held at South Melbourne’s charming Butterfly Club; a Victorian house with its parlour converted into a kitsch-cluttered lounge and the kitchen into a bar. It’s got a fairly clandestine entrance, which adds to the feeling that we’re slinking into somewhere shameful.

We cram into the front room with around 30 men and women, all clutching red wines, and not one of them looking particularly punchable. So far, so good.

Or this.

Glee hostess Vicky Jacobs has worked extensively coaching singers for musicals, and she has a warm, natural way about her. “I want her to run my life,” whispers Esther, brainwashed already.

Vicky runs us through some vocal exercises, each a tone higher than the last, so that we can discover our own comfortable pitch. I have a choking fit halfway through, which signifies I’ve passed mine already. I’m nervous that I’m going to vomit, because I used to trigger my gag reflex regularly when trying to sing along to screamy girl-bands in my teens. You know the ones – all jailbait dresses and photo shoots utilising raw meat.

Anyway, none of that here. We warm up with a run-through a ditty about some sailor whose flesh rots off his bones, sung in rounds. From there on, we sight-read our way through Solla Sollew, Chapel of Love, Falling Slowly and Over at the Frankenstein Place, singing in harmonies. En masse, it works, although I’m not ready for any solo spots. The songs sound so beautiful and forlorn that Esther and I grip our hearts and get goosebumps in rivulets… although I download the tracks later at home and it all suddenly feels a bit Sarah Brightman.

In the here and now, though, we’re filled with good cheer and wide-eyed about the whole experience. There’s a sense of stillness and robustness all at once. I may wind up rasping like Patty and Selma Bouvier for a few days, but I know I can get this feeling back.

Keeper? Yes.

Comments 2 Comments
Categories cosmic shit, social death risk, specialist skills

DAY 244: Gassing the old girl

2 May

I’D thought ‘gas’ was American for ‘petrol’ – giggle – but no. I’ve been joyfully reunited with my ute, now fixed, and I’m filling it up with a bit of gas because it’s dual fuel and it needs a bit in the tank at all times.

I pump the gas into the connection and it hisses right back out again, forming a frozen pool by my shoe. After a few minutes of this I fill the other tank with petrol and get back in – once I’ve figured out how to get the passenger door open again.

Truth be told, I’m too nervous to drive the thing myself right now. As a first car for the nervously inclined it’s starting to look like a dubious choice, and my parallel parking lessons didn’t extend to skips on wheels. So I get Old Dog to peel off down the freeway, with the old girl making a curious tha-thunk noise whenever there’s a burst of acceleration. Atmosphere: tense.

Keeper? Avoiding gas wherever possible. This vehicle is starting to look like a year-long challenge in itself, grumble.

Comments 2 Comments
Categories physical death risk, specialist skills

DAY 243: Eating my nemesis

1 May

Eel action shot. I just sicked in my mouth.

I’VE always had a morbid fear of eels.

I hear what you’re saying – sea snakes are worse – but perhaps because the English don’t eat jellied sea snakes and the beasts don’t hang out in rivers much* or star in porn films so regularly, they don’t rattle my cage.

The Mighty Boosh put it best when they mused:

Eels up inside ya
Findin an entrance where they can
Boring through your mind
Through your tummy
Through your anus
Eels!

This blog’s named after an Eels song, though, and it’s all about facing your fears, so I order an eel something-or-other at this café in Chinatown and get cracking.

I look a bit like an eel in this frock.

Fortunately, when the thing arrives it’s nicely grilled, and looks and tastes like a bit of white fish. If it was a foot long and covered in jelly, that would be a different story all together.

Keeper? Will have to tackle a jellied eel next in England. Then that’s it.

* Did you know: Eels don’t hang out in watering holes; they only like running water.

Comments 2 Comments
Categories creatures, food and drink

DAY 242: Jumping the border

30 Apr

WE’VE hit three deserts in three days, and the tip of the furthermost desert, the Murray-Sunset National Park, stops just short of Mildura, a country city on the Vic/NSW border.

Mildura’s a hell of a weird place. It’s an agricultural epicentre, a fruit pickin’ town, but American in design: wide highways, numbered streets on a grid, outskirts that stretch on into oblivion with the biggest Bunnings I’ve ever seen, endless motels, three drive-thru McDonalds within five minutes… all lined with palm trees. The larger district’s known as Sunraysia – so named when the ‘prince of ballyhoo’, local entrepreneur Jack De Garis, launched a competition to name the area’s dried fruits in 1919. Thrashes ‘Orange County’, I reckon.

The town centre itself is nearly swallowed whole, but eventually we find it – a mall and a strip of souvlaki joints jumbled up with fancy restaurants.

We’re here to see the Murray River, though, which doesn’t disappoint. We follow it out of town, as the bush pirate’s cortisol levels are going through the roof here, and hook up with it again the other side of Robinvale.

The Murray River acts as the NSW/Victoria border, so by jumping in I’ll be crossing into my third state in three days. There’s a beautiful sunset going on, which makes whizzing off down the river in a rip at least very scenic. Eventually I manage to engage some kind of a front crawl and get back to the bank. Stunning.

Keeper? Would definitely do that again.

Comments 1 Comment
Categories idiocy

DAY 241: Bothering bees

29 Apr

AS we approach the Little Desert on our road trip, we pass this unmanned platoon of beehives, and the bush pirate bid me run through them.

They’re pretty passive bees it has to be said, zigzagging through the air drunkenly. A few try to nest in my hair, but I’m not chased back to the car, so there’s little comedic value.