The power couple

The 2,000 seat auditorium is filling fast. Two minutes or so to go before the start of the concert. All the seats in our row are occupied except for the two to my left which adjoin the side wall so their occupants, if any, will need to squeeze past the full row to reach them.

Late arrivals are streaming down the aisles then doing the sideways crab crawl to their seats.

Then they appear. The power couple.

He is in his mid-twenties, growing a thin moustache which is barely hairier than his 8pm shadow. He is wearing a skinny suit, slightly crimped behind the knee joints from tightness and day long wear. He has slip on shoes and is either stocking-less or wearing skin toned socks. He looks like lamb posing as debonair mutton.

On this winter’s night she is dressed for a balmy summer’s evening on a verandah wearing a loose short sleeve pastel coloured blouse, light skinny jeans and towering stilettos.

Both carry auditorium friendly tiny plastic cups containing red wine. As each of us in the row stands in turn the couple slides by careful not to spill a drop of wine. They are not so much protective of our clothing but of the minuscule amount which surely won’t last till interval.

They take their seats at the row’s end and, entrance made, they share a whisper.

Fifteen seconds pass by, 105 seconds now to performance time. Nothing has happened yet, so she decides it is time to make her way out minus the plastic cup and wine. I decide on a semi raise rather than a full raise and she exercises additional caution to avoid my protruding knees. The others in the row take my cue and follow with semi raises of their own. She ambles off casually into the flow of other latecomers, smaller numbers now, who are almost racing down the aisles to reach their seats.

Another fifteen seconds passes. Although no-one in my hearing has said a word, it seems he feels the need to make an announcement. Apparently speaking to no-one in particular but everyone in general he says ‘I saw Ramin in back to back concerts in New York last year and he...is...ah...may...zing.’

‘Oh really?’ is the response from the row behind.

‘Ah...may...zing’, he reiterates.

‘And I saw Anna on her opening night at the Regent’, he adds.

No response from anyone. Maybe nobody is interested in Anna?

Sixty seconds to performance time.

She has reappeared and the audience member on the aisle decides not to rise; not even a semi rise. Each of us in turn, as though by unspoken concensus, follows suit. This slows her progress but undaunted she continues with ostentatious care to ensure her summery skinny jeans make no contact with the roughage of our wintery apparel.

Thus reunited, the power couple is ready. The auditorium lights are extinguished. The concert can commence.

Do you Henry Charles Albert David take Rachel Meghan?

Vanity Fair

There are many who probably wished that Henry Charles Albert David took Rachel Meghan as far away as possible from our televisions, radios, newspapers and social media sites. Their nuptials certainly took over the media waves to a degree rarely matched except by the most distressing of universal disasters or malevolent activity.

I joined my close friends for a curry night - that menu item was to prove strangely prophetic before the night was over - to watch the preliminaries, the ceremonies and the pageantry. After all, my Republican leanings notwithstanding, the British stage these Royal events so impressively.

Predictably just about everything was achieved with the reliability of Swiss clockwork. The one standout exception and the most impressive element were both contributed by the lost colony of those pesky United States.

The exception was the Most Reverend Michael B Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. In front of six hundred mostly British guests, by definition therefore staid impassive and unemotional, Bishop Curry departed from his prepared remarks and became...well...flamboyant. And he spent a long time doing it.

In our private, in front of the television, party this proved too much for both I and C who began to hurl insults at the screen. Unsurprisingly these insults had no impact upon the faraway Bishop; no doubt as uncaring as he was unknowing of his impact in Sydney suburban Seaforth.

Bishop Curry continued to wave his arms, modulate his excitable delivery and generally chew up precious celebrity spotting time which proved too much for I and C who both fled from the television room refusing to return until confirmation that his sermon was at ended. During that self imposed banishment C consoled himself with a second, and if I may say so greedy, helping of curry (of the chicken variety). Too much of (Bishop) Curry meant too much curry for C.

And the most impressive element? Without question or equal that award goes to Doria Ragland, the mother of the bride. Dignified and stylish, Ms Ragland stole the show without uttering a word; flamboyant or otherwise.

Good Housekeeping

Sydney's Big Apple

Till photograph do us part....

There is this interesting little industry in Sydney - and perhaps elsewhere - catering for youngish couples travelling from Japan and China to be photographed in front of our scenic locations dressed in their wedding 'clobber'. No wedding attendants in attendance, no wedding party in attendance, no guests in attendance and no witnesses in attendance. Just the couple, the photographer and the photographer's assistant. And this takes place before the wedding.

The Sydney Opera House is a popular background as is the Archibald Fountain in Sydney's Hyde Park.

Locals go about their business, mostly oblivious to the matrimonial performance.

Shock Jock Rules in the Interval

I was taking some snaps of the orchestra and audience returning to their seats ahead of the resumption  of the Broadway to La Scala concert in the Sydney Opera House yesterday. I didn't notice the raised finger at the bottom until later.

But therein lies a story. The finger appears to be against the grey hair of a gentleman. But that was no gentleman. That grey-haired head belongs to a Radio Shock Jock. A very well known Sydney Shock Jock. Probably Australia's most notoriously known Shock Jock in a city which has a gaggle of notorious Shock Jocks.

Blow it; I'll tell you who. Alan Jones; that's who.

Mr Jones spent the twenty minutes long interval in deep conversation with a gentleman to his left. Throughout the conversation he waved his hands about extravagantly in the manner of someone who is laying down the law to a recalcitrant. Mr Jones is well used to laying down the law especially to people who are to his left. Mr Jones is accustomed to lecturing Prime Ministers, Premiers, sundry politicians, rugby players and his many, many listeners.

Curiously Mr Jones had a pen in hand throughout what appeared to be heavily a one sided conversation. Perhaps he'd been taking notes during the concert and didn't want to let go. Perhaps he was anticipating autograph hunters although I didn't notice any. Maybe he is just one of those who has a pen handy at all times.

I imagine Mr Jones will make mention of his attendance at the concert in his broadcast tomorrow morning. If so he might mention his interval discussion. I won't know. I tired of listening to Mr Jones' lecturing a long time ago.

Drive tastefully

The message on this fashion conscious vehicle

Strangers in Paradise

I enjoyed dinner and an evening with friends this week including M who lives in what might be called a designer suburb of Sydney.

Breakfast Point

Breakfast Point has arisen from the metaphorical ashes of an old gas works site. A new suburb of perhaps 3,000 residents in just under twenty years. The residential complexes are built around a number of community facilities including a sports oval and its adjacent sparklingly clean and organised Country Club.

M took us on a tour of the club before we moved on to a restaurant in a nearby 'non-designed' suburb. Each Friday evening the Country Club hosts nibbles and drinks for residents and their guests. Without any reflection on our good friend M it all felt a bit like stepping into the cinematic town of Stepford.

The Country Club

There were about thirty others in little groupings. One couple joined us, glasses of red wine in hand. He was particularly vocal dominating the conversation over his wife who remained mute, not lifting the glass to her lips.

'We couldn't wait to downsize' he informed us. 'Push the kids out and get our lives back' he continued. The 'kids', now aged in their thirties, live respectively in Canberra and Darwin, he said. One has provided a grandchild. The couple is estranged from their children and don't get to see the grandchild. 'Good riddance to them' was the unmistakeable unspoken summary.

This and other tidbits of sensational insider information was imparted to us - complete strangers to the couple - within minutes of meeting. Putting a final stamp on the conversation, the wife finally joined in. Lifting her glass to take an earthy sip of her wine she informed me in confidential tones, 'If I'd known how much trouble children are, I would never have had any'.

NYE

ABC News: Photo by Brant Cumming

On the past two New Years Eve nights I hosted small groups of friends at my apartment from which I enjoy an enviable view of Sydney's fireworks display.

This year I played the NYE equivalent of Scrooge by staying at home and inviting nobody. It can feel selfish not to invite friends to share this comfortable way of enjoying the event. There are no crowds to battle, no need for milk crates to stand on for a shaky glimpse of the festivities, no fee charged for the 'exclusive' viewing location and I provide comfortable furniture for guests to sit on between displays. To top off, even my 'cooking' would be marginally better than fast food options at harbourside fast food outlets.

But I invited nobody. I didn't feel guilty about it; just a bit weary. Weary from a hard year of volunteer work four days a week. Weary from a commitment to play bridge two nights a week, a commitment now given up. Weary from an enjoyable overseas trip that involved huge amounts of walking plus the stressful, if eventually satisfying, experience of driving on scary mountainous, hairpin roads in Sicily.

My immediate neighbours, a youngish upwardly mobile couple, showed off their fancy view to a full balcony load of guests. I'm not certain exactly what form their party took. It was slightly odd. Their apartment was packed with oggling guests for the 9pm 'Family fireworks' display but fifteen minutes afterwards all the guests had departed. The apartment was packed again for the main display at midnight. What happened in between? Did everyone adjourn somewhere else for dinner? Was the second group a different group from the early guests? Did the couple offer two fireworks 'sittings', so to speak?

I'm curious but I won't ask. They might think I am stalking!

Food queues

Oh how we pitied those poor burghers of the Eastern Europe Communist regimes in the 1980s and earlier. The burghers who had to queue for hours to enter supermarkets to purchase the odd loaf of bread or a can of tinned food forlornly displayed on near empty shelves.

Those indignities didn't befall we smug residents comfortably ensconced in our First World Western democracies, did they?

Fast forward to 2016.

This is a queue in the affluent Sydney suburb of Woollahra two mornings before Christmas Day.

Of course, this is not a food shortage queue. This is a queue for the fashionable shopper. The ones who want to purchase their Christmas meat from a shiny, fashionable, expensive butchery where the word 'shortage' is never uttered nor understood.

In case you want to be a part of this nonsense, the name of the butchery is Victor Churchill. Those who reached the head of the queue this morning were greeted by a gentleman wearing tails and a top hat (of course) and a young lady who could take their order and swipe their credit card, all before they were admitted through the hallowed doors.

I wasn't in the vicinity for the butchery or the queue. I was headed to the chicken takeaway store next door.

Trick? Treat?

Halloween seems to be a thing now; at least in Sydney's eastern suburbs where I live. Ghoulish house decorations are increasingly the go and parents/guardians are taking to the streets before sunset with their little darlings in tow each holding a bucket for all those treats they hope to collect. I gather that is the aim.

I don't know why parents would feel that extorting loads of lollies from neighbours and strangers is a desirable activity for their children but there you go. Commercialism and marketing trump sense.

Here is one of my neighbourhood residences dressed to kill for the evening.

Back at the DOG

For a couple of years Cs and I spent many a Tuesday night having dinner at the DOG. Two meals for the price of one. Two main meals for the single price of just the dearer selection.

The menu didn't change and truthfully we were probably bored with the food but it was a cheap meal out and the clientele, heavily based on British and Irish Tradies on working holidays in Australia still wearing their construction work clothes provided irresistible eye candy.

Oh, this is the DOG;

The affectionate nickname for the Duke of Gloucester Hotel in the Sydney suburb of Randwick.

Then came disaster. The restaurant section changed hands. The menu changed and the two for one Tuesday became two burgers for the price of one. The real disaster, though, was that the Tradies stopped coming.

That was about six months ago.

I suspect that the hotel regretted that change. The management of the restaurant has changed again. So has the menu and two for the price of one has returned. Not so, it seems, have the Tradies returned. The menu is slightly pricier but at least a degree of choice has returned. We enjoyed out meal there this evening and whilst Tradies were not in evidence there enough eye candy to encourage us to return. For a while at least.

Blue sneakers

Housekeeping, buggies, a surprise, orange

When you are at an island resort the last thing you expect at 8.15am is the sound of housekeeping announcing themselves with loud banging on your hotel door. It was clear they weren't going anywhere until I presented myself which I did with a towel covering the modesty of my not so modestly sized torso. A young woman gazed back at me rather sullenly as though my appearance was lowering the tone of the resort. Behind her was a young man with an even more sullen gaze whose youthful beauty would have had me inviting him in with alacrity in my own youth. But those days are long gone.

I asked them to give me a few minutes which, as I type this, they apparently interpreted as 'housekeeping is not required today'.

'What to do today' I wondered over a breakfast which included the curiosity of lamingtons amongst the croissants and Danish pastries. I sat myself down and read some of the literature promoting activities and decided on a full day cruise through the Whitsundays, which I booked at the Resort Centre. Booked for  tomorrow, that is; as I had missed today's cruise delayed, of course, by my unexpected early visitors.

So I was still left with the question, what to do today? I decided I would hire a buggy. The island is packed with holiday makers and indeed residents and workers criss crossing the limited road network on buggies.

As it turns out I was too late for a buggy. The hirers were overbooked and had a waiting list only. I decided to take the Green shuttle bus across the hill and to the marina area with its shops, eating outlets and general people watching activities.

Who should be the first person for me to watch but a fellow volunteer from the hospital who does the identical volunteer job to me at the hospital. She introduced me to her husband as 'Victor who does her job at the hospital' (on other days) when of course if it was me doing the introducing the correct explanation would be that it is she who does my job at the hospital. But let's not be petty.

The chance meeting was as amicable as you'd expect when one side (them) is staying at the most exclusive and expensive resort on the island behind a high wall and the other side (me) is staying at the all you can pack in, no fence at all, 'el cheapo' resort.

Not surprisingly no promises were made to catch up for pre-dinner drinks before holiday's end.

I made a quick departure just in time to catch the Orange shuttle bus for a sightseeing junket around the island which as Murphy's Law would decree included a run alongside the high wall separating my volunteer colleague and her husband in their resort from we sweaty mortals on the bus.

Don't you love chance meetings?

'Airlie dreamin'

Without any planning or forethought I turned up at the Marina and booked myself on the Port of Airlie via Daydream Island ferry route thus creating a day's cruising and sightseeing program for myself.

It worked quite well. The first leg of about thirty minutes through what I guess might be the Whitsunday Passage to Daydream Island was very pleasing visually. Arriving at DI we were serenaded by two Islanders playing gentle vaguely South Pacific sounding melodies. All very romantic for this ageing gay solo traveller.

I had two hours on the DI resort which was more than enough to get the feel of this tiny island resort. Quieter than Hamilton Island even with families and young children frolicking in the various pools. Somehow I managed to lose my cap during those two hours. I retraced my steps several times but found no trace of it. Added to the apparent death of my MacBook that constitutes two 'disasters' and no I wonder whether the proverbial third one awaits me?

Then on to Airlie on the Queensland mainland which was heaving with youthful energy on this hot Good Friday. I can't say there is a lot to see there on a quick visit but I had splendid stroll around the main town area and the garden lagoon packed with young semi naked bodies engaged in a surprising amount of romantic cuddling.

Then it was back to the Airlie ferry wharf for the return journey - including a second stop at DI - arriving back at Hamilton Island in the late afternoon.

All I all, a very satisfactory day of crushing and sightseeing considering that I had not planned a single activity for the day half and hour before the departure.

I put my feet up in the evening and read a book until sleep hit me like a bulldozer.

Back streets in Paddington

Napier Street

Selwyn Street

Little Napier Street

Little Selwyn Street

Mobile art

Organic Bread Bar, Bourke Street

Bird watchers

Japanese group, Centennial Park, Sydney

Take a seat

My periodic visit to the financial advisor. Yes, I have one of those.

The routine is same each time. Take a seat. Would I like a coffee, tea or water? A glass of water each time. Wait five minutes.

Browse around the small foyer. Occasionally another client passes by but very rarely. This time an elderly couple with, I assume, their adult son depart from the conference rooms. 'G'day' says the elderly man to me. 'Hope your news is better than mine' he adds.

I look at the magazines neatly piled on the side table.

A motoring magazine and a golfing magazine (for sir?) and Marie Claire and a travel magazine (for madam?).

Oh, and my news was fine (I think).

A swell send-off

It was simply by chance. Wednesday morning and our nursing home participants are delayed arriving because of heavy traffic. So, whilst I wait I flick through the newspaper and there I notice in the funeral announcements, a section of the paper I only occasionally look at, the name of a former work colleague and friend with whom I have had no contact since exchanging Christmas niceties last year. What a shock. He'd seemed in acceptable health always and a death announcement was unexpected.

The funeral was today. More than 250 in attendance. Clearly a man respected by many. His grown up family impressive in their demeanour and speech. Charming young grandchildren participating articulately and with poise beyond their youth. Widow dignified.

I shed a tear as the coffin was carried out of the church.

Sunday in New York

Last night we saw 'Matilda: The Musical' on Broadway. The stage show, which is coming to Sydney in August 2015, has music and lyrics by the Australian musician Tim Minchin and is based on a children's novel by Roald Dahl.

'Matilda: The Musical' at the Schubert Theatre

It is a very entertaining show with energetic performances from a group of talented children and adults. The tunes are catchy, if not memorable afterwards.
★★★★

Today was our most leisurely so far in New York. We walked down to Madison Avenue at East 90th Street for brunch at the Corner Cafe and Bakery.

Smoked Salmon & Cheese Bagel with Lemonade

Whilst at the Bakery, talk show host Geraldo Rivera and his wife called in for take away coffees. We understand they were on their way to the Joan Rivers funeral about to be held nearby.

After lunch we walked across to Central Park where we sat for a while watching the activity around us.

Families playing softball in the Park

We had tickets for another show this afternoon and caught the subway into town around 1.30pm. Although it was a Sunday the train was as crowded as at any other time we have travelled.

Subway packed, as usual

Today's show was the comedy 'It's Only A Play' a wicked comedy about theatre people waiting for the reviews of their play which has opened that night. The show makes a lot of fun, some of it pretty crude bordering on cruel, of real performers and shows. The audience received it with a standing ovation. It was very funny.
★★★★

Here are some photos from that theatre.

Outside the theatre, cast details

Waiting for the curtain to rise

The audience to my right

Decorative auditorium

Dinner tonight was pasta and meatballs at a nearby tiny Italian restaurant to which we have taken a shine.

Visitors day 3, Cruise day 1

The excuse for our get together is Fd and my birthdays which are one day apart. Fd is one year and one day younger than I am. We have booked on a short cruise Sydney to Brisbane all of 38 hours in duration. It amazes me that a short cruise like this would attract something like 1,950 passengers but there you go.

There are all manner of passengers aboard. A number go 'hen's' groups one of which all wear identical tutus and blonde wigs and another group wearing identical caps identifying each member as 'Mum of the bride', 'bridesmaids' etc. There is a group of about 20 who look like a team of footballers and their 'WAGs' (wives and girlfriends) all wearing identical tropical shirts. There are young families with babies in prams and elderly passengers with walking frames. Looks like everyone loves cruising.

We are travelling on the Pacific Jewel. It is not the newest or the most luxurious of cruise liners but perfectly acceptable for a journey like this. We were on board by about 1pm and 'sail' time was scheduled for 4pm however this was deferred until 6pm because 'hundreds' of passengers were delayed arriving by a power failure at Sydney Airport during the morning.

We started with a lunch in the general smorgasbord dining room but frankly didn't fancy the quality or choice very much and (it transpired) that all subsequent meals were to be taken in the formal dining room which we enjoyed far more.

We spent a few hours exploring the ship and the layout during this afternoon until it was time for the mandatory safety drill.

The evening's activities included a go at the Guess the Famous Faces Trivia quiz which we did reasonably well at. We popped into the evening show at a moment when a magician was tearing up a passenger's bank notes but we didn't stay.

Then it was back to our cabins for some conversation and finally bed.