White Night, Melbourne, Feb 22, 2014

Was looking forward for this.  An all night event where Melbourne's buildings were lit up with visual art installations.  It had a very normal start while it was still bright at about 7pm with family and our friends Haydn and Anna plus kids.


Indigo's taken to looking more teen cool.  Has a new 'RAD' beeny.  Not sure that one needs to have 'Rad' written on a beeny if you are already rad by nature.

According the broadsheet.com.au events were meant to begin at 7pm.  It was clearly too bright for the wall projections so we made our way through a Swanston Street that heaved with thousands and thousands of people as far as the eye could see to Bourke Street Mall where the jazz and R&B music stages could be found.

Swanston Street facing south to the War Memorial

The piano had issues so waited and we waited until Blow came on stage.  Following some kind of joke by the lead instrumentalist that backfired they got one with it.  Actually very good....if you like modern-ish jazz. Sounded a bit like Love Supreme-era Coltrane. Our kids didn't like contemporary jazz.  Not exactly a surprise, so we left after ten minutes.  Pat and I resolved to see Blow play at The Horn in Collingwood where they have a regular gig. 

Indigo and Lani showing the teenage pose of "not-impressiveness with modern jazz"

Via watching a live cartoonist we all went outside the State Library to watch the video projections.  We hung out there for fifteen minutes or so and took a few pics.  The projections were nice but not very thought provoking.

Around the corner we watched some 70's big band funk hybrid band before everyone else went home and I went on traipsing through Melbourne's streets.  It was 10:10pm.

It had all been very nice til then.  A casual evening out with family and friends.  My mind went down a different path after all that.

To Scot's Church were there was a painting based upon the Terry Taylor's visit to an ossuary in Paris.  A short background note was given out to everybody on entry to the church.  The artist has visited Paris shortly after her father's death, went into an ancient crypt or ossuary and looked at the rows of skulls.  To the artist it was as though after death the deceased look and judge us throughout time.  It made her reflect upon her father more intensely and inspired this work.

It begin to irk me that there hundreds and thousands of people would each take a note, not read it, file down the aisle of teh church, take a picture on their iPhone then walk off.  Not a moment to contemplate the picture or its intent at all.  They often spend more time looking at the pic on the iPhone than looking at the original.

  At first all this irked me.  

I'd been getting annoyed at gigs where people try to get near the front of the audience to feel the vibe then spend the entire gig with their phone in the air trying to get the ideal pic or video.  So they are trying to leach off the gig but in so doing ruin the atmosphere.

My annoyance had turned into incredulity at a recent recent to MONA in Hobart were people would walk to a picture take a photo of the notes on the wall, then the painting itself then walk off without taking even a moment to take in the art.

So I guess I was pre-disposed.....until I came to the conclusion that it was more interesting to study the people taking the pictures.

Pic 1 (above).  A couple in the vast minority that took time to contemplate to Terry Taylor's Tribute to life and to my Dad, Robert Geoffrey Taylor
Pic 2.(below)  One of the majority...walked right up to the painting, took a pic, then walked off. immediately

I left after about 20 minutes and walked down Flinders Street down to the river.  There was a steep embankment before getting to the flat bit aside the river.  Many professional-style photographers where lined up in the dark at the ridge of the hill watch the huge pyramid video installation below.  the dark sillouettes of the photographers made a dramatic contrast to the urban skyscraper aura behind.  It was nigh on impossible to capture on my cheap camera

The video installation was very watchable.  There were booming speakers playing weird low sounds.  I mused on the fact that if it had been accompanied by 120 beats per minute drums this would be considered depressing techno/ambient music like Aphex Twin and sell heaps of records.  Without the beats it is "art" "sound installation" that required expensive sub-woofer speakers to play.  So it is basically another way of saying the artist is poor and cost taxpayers money to listen to it.

I walked down the embankment to the video installation and took pictures of the shadows of people taking pictures of the installation

I was walking away having enjoyed watching this video thing.  However a man run past with a camera stuck on top of a stick telling all around to 'Follow the pole! Follow the pole!'  So I followed him back to the pyramid.

NASA astronauts took that famous picture 'Earthrise' as they were on their way to the moon.  Well, I proudly present 'Pole Rise'.  The photographer didn't seem to pay much attention to the pyramid and chatted with his friends instead.

Pole Rise.  22.02.2014

On St Kilda Bridge huge bright letters spelling White Night were there.  Throngs took pictures of it.  They will surely put it in a folder called 'White Night" and for those that enter it will have a first picture greet them saying 'White Night' in case they forgot the name of the folder from two seconds before.  They will then skip the picture because.....it isn't very interesting.  Their friends that look in the folder will skip it in even shorter time....because they didn't experience this great evening, the photo doesn't help do that either, and....the photo isn't very interesting.

Off to NGV where the whole facade was taken up with a video on tattoes.  I watched for about ten minutes, and then yes, self-righteous me took a pic.

For the evening the NGV was open all night with free entry so past midnight I went inside.  What greeted me was a section of the room with a live model and an area where people could sit, be given paper, and draw the model.  It was great.  I briefly pondered my objections to event-photography were unfair, because the people drawing were doing no different, other than using older tech (pencil and paper).

Then I saw people taking pictures of the people taking pictures of the live model....

and better, people sitting in the live drawing area reviewing on their phone the pictures they have taken of the people taking pictures of the model.

I was laughing by this point.  Just to ham it up, I found a place where I could take a picture of myself taking a picture of other people taking pictures of other people taking pictures of the live model.

As I try to explain to myself all these permutations of people taking pictures, my mind was full of Rolf Harris singing The Court of King Caractacus.  If you don't understand that, then check this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybjio6z4BA

I went into the Melbourne Now! exhibition.  Fantastic.  So much energy.  Must go back.  One piece of art had a TV on a pole.  The TV was displaying a video of the artist running in his runners to the NGV.  Here is a picture of a person in the gallery taking of picture of the artist taking a picture of going to the gallery.

Good night.

Saturday 18 December 2010: To Mildura

I fondly recall one day in Manchester, England in about 1993 or thereabouts. I got the service bus to the CBD with a toothbrush and a clean pair of underpants in my coat pocket, went inside a travel agency and said get a flight somewhere. Several hours later I was in Amsterdam for a good long weekend. I picked up a Rough Guide on the way and worked everything out on the way.

The Idea behind this trip wanted to take in some amount of spontineity while ensuring that I went somewhere my wife and daughter would have no particular interest in. So the idea was to fly to Mildura, hire a care and go north. Work out the detail later.

Prep was simple. Three spare pairs of underpants & socks, two tee shirts, MP3 player, laptop for journal. Books. Only seem to have factual ones unread on shelf….might be a bit dry for the trip reading one about Pakistani politics post 9/11.

Having outback NSW as a destination seemed good also because there are no wineries there.

Trip to airport, airport hundrum and the flight were okay. The land around Mildura looked flat and uninteresting. Small airport. Had a hire a car there, and I couldn’t help thinking I didn’t get the best deal from Hertz – with hindsight the guys was trying it on..

The great Italian write Dante in his epic work, Inferno, imagined seven levels of Hell. In my case I’ve kept a league table of the towns I’d least like to end up in to live life – I called it the Rotherham Scale. Instead of going 1 to 10, it goes 1 to Rotherham. It must be said I’d not actively maintained this list since leaving the UK. Rotherham is clearly top, nut UK towns Rochdale and Blackburn come quite high up. I’d never considered Aussie town on this less than illustrious scale. Corryong on the border of Victoria and NSW was a possibility that crossed my mind while on holiday in 2002. No street lights, the TVs get no reception, everything except for the church on one grim pub one at night.

And of course I’ve written this because Mildura has joined the list. My Facebook status that night said “Mildura exists, why?”. The city is in a grid pattern with streets in one direction the names of fruits. The people of Mildura couldn’t think of anything after that so all the streets running perpendicular to the fuity ones are called Eighth Street’, ‘Ninth Street’ etc.. These streets are wide. The CBS is barely that. And besides the city is in awe of Stefano’s – one of Victoria’s best eateries by repute. So Mildura has one thing to shout about – and boy does it go on, and on, and on about it. Stefano this, Stefano that. It is feintly ironic that most Mildurans can’t afford to eat their at a fixed price $170 per head before drink. I stood outside it for a while. It amidst a 100 meter strip of eateries. Not many of interest.

Mildura high street - peak Saturday. Dead

The people at tourist information gave me a look. Reminded me of the one from the Hertz guy. “You’re not local” was the feeling. “Don’t have to be friendly”. Same thing happened at the motel reception. There’s an attitude thing goin on here, and I don’t like it. A bit offish. The motel made a thing of their prices on the outside, but it transpired they were low season prices.
So I went for a swim in the most chlorinated pool I’ve been in for while. Went to see Tron (very average) at the movies stopping off at a cheap Asian take-away restaurant where I ate a yuimmy chicken BBQ plum sauce noodles while watching Australia tear up England’s second inning in the The Ashes third test. Got to bed at midnight.

I simply can’t think of any reason why somebody would want to live in Mildura. It lives on gaining glory by association with one man, the chef at Stephano’s. Older signs allude to a similar attempt to gain by association from a now past era – Sunraisia – okay, the name of the region, but evidently an attitude from a perceived time of fruit growing pride.

The place simply looks devoid of anything.

Celbrate Xmas with style. Decorate your water tank.

Epilogue

Sitting in my study at home in Langwarrin can I draw all the last few weeks together.

Interviewer: So what was the best food?
Neil: Well, it was all good. I don’t remember eating anything I didn’t like, though a lot of the coffee was lame. Nice to have English sausages again, and eat lots of foie gras. The prawn croquettes in stock I had in Sheung Wan were good, as was the chicken liver in Lin Heung. The jamon iberico and Malloran sausage in Elciego were fantastic. But I believe the joy of surprise. It is difficult to explain how good the pain aux raisens (Aus speak: escargot) I bought from some random backstreet bakery in a Bayonne were. So the laurels go to the escargot.

Interviewer: So what was the best wine?
Neil: On purely emotional grounds it was the Faustino Gran Reserva Rioja 1995. If I was a bit more unemotional about it then maybe the Vega Sicilia that I bought a glass of from a tapas bar in Logrono. The St. Joseph I bought in Paris and drank in Biarritz was good too.

Inteviewer: And how about the rankings of hotels you and Pat keep
Neil: Well, we’ve been debating this as the hotel in Elciego was that good. I can’t decide whether to put it on an equal footing as Cape Lodge in Margaret River, Australia as the single best hotel I’ve ever been in.

Inteviewer: Anything Else?
Neil: Yes. However great the holiday certainly was, and however great it was to enjoy the regionality of France and Spain, the crazy roads in Hong Kong, Never Never Land in the UK, & all that food and all that wine, the best thing was simply to be with all my family, and be with friends, some of whom I’ve not seen in years. That statement might read a bit crap, and I’m open to a cynic’s accusation of my writing something to keep a friend or family member reading this happy. But it is true. How often do I have the opportunity to sit with my family that live so far away and simply enjoyed sharing time with them as the nice people they actually are? How wonderful is it to catch up with friends after so long and see that in the intervening five years they’ve built something wonderful, like Adeline & Ben’s family, or have a wonderful horizon such as Ollie and Lucy with the daughter they are expecting, or can face an uncertain future having built a core of stability in the face of economic adversity such as Martyn and all my friends from Direct Line?

And I thought of Indigo. Are we depriving Indigo of something by living away from all this? Living in dynamic Hong Kong as we briefly pondered years ago, or missing something by not living in some outer-suburb or other in London?

In a sense the answer is obviously yes. But, I wouldn’t bring up a kid in a mono-cultural regional town in Spain, or in the schizophrenic Basque Region, or in Paris, which once out of the jewellery box centre is one tough city indeed. Nor would I bring one up in any suburb of London that I would be able to afford in a lifetime (and neither would most Londoners). Brett, the Brisbane-ite we met in Paris earlier in the holiday noted that during the British portion of his holiday he saw the British youth out on the streets ‘looking bored’. Hong Kong people given a choice often send their kids overseas to be educated….often to Australia.

And so sitting here I feel pretty darn good. We had a wonderful holiday, mostly because of the people we shared time with. On leaving Melbourne Airport I sat in the car driving down freeway at 100 in the Green Goddess….so easy due to the lack of congestion, and had a nice Melburnian coffee to my side….proper coffee. The sun was shining, and the air was nice and dry.

It felt good.

Tuesday 29 September 2990 Onwards: Homeward Bound O

For no particularly good reason it felt like we were on the homeward leg of the holiday to Melbourne even before we got to England. Maybe it was the thought of there only being one week left of the entire holiday, maybe the thought of two long haul flights coming up within days of now.

The 200km drive down the A1 to London Heathrow was uneventful, as was customs, as was duty free (albeit my buying five bottles of Grand Reserve Rioja), and onwards to Hong Kong.

At Hong Kong we popped up to Mong Kok for an enjoyable tour of the flower, bird and goldfish markets before being taken to another traditional Cantonese restaurant in Sheung Wan.


Indigo, pictures standing in-front of the flowers giving her Chinese name, Dzi-lan

It was very busy as today was the 60th anniversary of communist rule in China. So the harbour had a massive fireworks show. The TV coverage showed a military parade of the type I’d last seen in the 80’s Soviet era. The locals showed no apparent emotion or opinion either way, though I did note that the editor of the South China Morning Post that day did note the need to cleanse the Party of corruption. The next day I picked up the bottle of Sean Thackrey Orion 1994 that I’d ordered two weeks beforehand, the culmination of three years of searching for his wine. Patrick had helped me get to the vendor’s office by hailing a taxi for me. The journey through Mid-Levels, Sheung Wan the opened out to the vistas of Central yet again reinforcing the dynamism of Hong Kong. It really is a special place. After picking up new glasses for Pat we went back to the MIL’s and then by bus to the airport. Wing Hei cried as we walked to the departure gate checkpoint.

Monday 28 September 2009: Woodsetts, Yorkshire

For all the hell of travel in London, and the nightmare of the A23 two days earlier, from the word go the drive from Euston to my parents was a easy. The traffic density meant that the 3.5 hour journey required more intense concentration while driving but was otherwise easy. Oddly, people in the south did not speed very much, while people in the north did.

The road down to my parents’ village seemed small and pokey, but the village itself looked well kept. The house which seemed so large when I was a kid, seemed quite small now – probably the effect of being in Aussie houses. It too was well kept. We enjoyed a late lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with my mum’s apple crumble for afters. My dad seemed happy in his own home, and the mental load of being in France having been lifted.

Craig and Ian visited from Barnsley and Newcastle respectively. It was so good to see them. I hadn’t met Ian for about 8 years, and Craig for 15. In my mind the years did not matter and we chatted for hours.

Sunday 27 September 2009: Never Never Land

In my scrapbook at home have an article published in about 2002 in the London Evening Standard. Written for locals it was about Croydon. It suggested that for maybe tourists high of the ‘Never Never Land’ of central London and all of its delight should – if they wanted to visit the real England – go to Croydon, as it was the nearest place to London where the real England appeared. Central London was somehow unrepresentative of the country as a whole. I thought then, as I do now, that this entire view was true.

It had been so, so very good to see everyone (except the prostitute) from Croydon two nights previous, and likewise to see my London friends in the eaterie on Saturday. I felt passionate about them. However, Croydon as a physical place I had little feeling for. Today was for Indigo. She can’t remember Never Never Land, the place of her birth. Today we went there.

She asked to go to the only things she knew of, the London Eye, and Big Ben. We got there by taxi using the best driver I’d been with in years. He drove London, and drive it well: Sharp, quick witted, fast, yet safe. Indigo was pumped and really enjoyed the London Eye. I was quite emotional, for the first time in the UK. I’d have done anything to be own a place in central London and live there the rest of my life, and Pat bought into the idea. Always did. And within seconds of being outside the taxi I felt the pulse, the rush, the colour, and the energy of central London. The theatres, the art house cinema, the A list exhibitions that London and maybe only four other cities in the world gets. And I longed again for this, thought about my quiet, working class suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne and my long commute, the price we had paid. And it was at this point I evoked in my mind that article in the Evening Standard. Buying in central London was just out of reach in even 1996 – the bottom of the property market before the longest economic boom in modern history – I’d only just started a graduate job. Adeline had family help in buying a 1 bed apartment in Marylebone, surfed the property market and now had a mortgage free three bed detached house in Streatham at the age of 35. Buying in central London went farther and farther out of reach as the boom went on. Central London was a Never Never Land then, and remained ever increasingly through our decision to leave, and was equally so now. In the 2-3 years leading up to our migration we tried hard to find a formula that worked for us in England, but never quite could. Never Never Land is nothing like the real England that the newspaper article evoked. Nor is it anything like the towns in the shires that we could have bought a place in for a mortgage at 5 times my salary, for a 10 minute commute to a station for a one hour train ride to work. My brain says we did the right thing, but standing on the banks of the Thames my heart still yearned.





We got a boat cruise down the Thames to Tower Bridge and back before walking past Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, Household Cavalry, Trafalgar Square thence to Buckingham Palace. Indigo began to take interest in the statues we saw. So I told her about Winston Churchill and the times in which he lived, and how people feel about him. Then I told her about Oliver Cromwell, the killing of Charles I, and how on the restoration of the monarchy twenty years later the new king Charles II ensured Cromwell’s head was removed from his body and stuck on a spike. I forgotten how there was a statue of Abraham Lincoln across from the Houses of Parliament, so we talked about slavery and the American Civil War. And then I had to talk about Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. There was near circularity about that as to explain it I had to mention the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and Napoleon. More talk of wars and blood.

Got the tube from Green Park to South Kensington where we ate at Paul’s. Met Ann, and the Chans and went in the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur section, and later on the mammals. Very good.

More tube and train. Hell, Victoria Station is so busy. Travel in London is so...well, if not difficult, then intense. There are simply so many people. Now to Streatham Common, letting the girls play. Tamara and Indigo really got on. Tamara looks like Adeline. It struck me yet again what a superb family the Chans were. We not met them since we left – before they were wed and before kids. There they were a great family unit, settled in a nice mortgage free house in London, with safe jobs and a great attitude. Ben is very mentally active and creates a really stimulating environment around Adeline and the kids from which they will most surely benefit. Adeline, so maternal now, was superb.

Saturday 26 September 2009: Streatham

The incident with the prostitute at 3am in the evening had meant I had seven shades of no sleep again when I tried to get a live internet radio feed for the AFL Grand Final. The Age reported it was half time and the Saints were winning. My friend Tanvi saw I was online, and she put her laptop in front of her TV in Australia, set up a Skype video conference so I could watch the second half. The Saints lost in the time added on during the fourth quarter. Crud.

We taxied to Da Tung in the Wing Yip centre on Croydon’s Purley Way. It had been our place to get yum cha while living in the UK. And next door’s Tai Pan bakery sold the best dan mark goon and cha siu bao I’d ever known. There we met Adeline and Ben Chan, and Martyn and Nikki – with whose son was a cause of concern due to domestic concerns prior to his going to the London School of Economics. Yum cha was still good. It still sells some of those old fashioned Cantonese dishes like dza lai wong bao (deep fried coconut custard buns) that you can’t get anywhere else – including Hong Kong.

The five mile journey from Croydon to Streatham straight up the A23 Brighton Road was one I had driven – and when training for the marathon, had run – innumerable times. Martyn and Nikki kindly offered to drive us up. I took one hour. I was a total reminder of London and its traffic. It was horrific. The needless constriction in the road near Waddon station, the maddening junction by Trinity Way. Oh, yes, the memories came straight back. Turning off onto Streatham’s side streets, more memories: the thin roads with parked cars aligning each side leaving space for only one car to drive through. Spotting a car coming the opposite way leading to the duck and weave, the stop and start. Surely, driving through Baghdad is easier. God, I’m glad I got away from this.

We met friends, RJ, Ollie, & Lucy (now 7 months pregnant) for a nice evening meal. Having met them all in Australia within the past two years gave a feeling of great continuity with them all.