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Monday, December 21, 2009

Not fab-keen on Mondays


Music is playing in the background. It’s the new CD by a band called The Woohoo Revue. We caught their act last night at The Red Rattler in Marrickville. TWR is a 6 piece band from Melbourne; five guys and a woman in a shiny lime green leotard and black tights who play gypsy-style folk / jazz (for the want of a better discription). They were a lot of fun. Spike danced herself sore. We had been drawn to the Red Rattler by the main attraction, Waiting For Guinness (a seven piece, all-male bunch who come from the same sort of musical place, maybe a bit more diverse in their interests with a broader range, a much larger array of instruments – maybe twenty or more between the performers – plus vocals, including original songs).


The music was excellent, the venue as good this time as it was on our first visit (inviting, friendly, over the top with Lesbian kitsch, including outré furnishings that I’ve said elsewhere look as if they’ve been salvaged from a 19th Century Parisian brothel that’s gone out of business). Sadly there was a much smaller crowd last night than on the evening we caught The Barons Of Tang (when the place was jumping). There might have 50 or 60 people. Take out the venue crew, the bands’ guest lists and the sound guy and there may have been 30 or so of us paying at the door. That was a pity. Both bands deserved better. It obviously would have had an effect on the take at the door (at $20 per ticket, no one got rich last night). But the greatest effect was on the atmosphere. They are both bands that play music to dance to. With so few people in attendance it was almost impossible to build the momentum. Anyone getting up to dance – and quite a few did – looked and felt a bit exposed on the sparsely populated dance floor. There was no chance for dancers to lose themselves in the physicality of their movement. There was no crowd to vanish into then let yourself go. Folk danced and enjoyed themselves when they did so but it wasn’t quite the experience either the bands or the dancers had looked forward to at the start of the night.


But we had fun chatting to band members before and after the show – it’s that kind of place: small, intimate; band members taking money at the door on the way in and selling CDs at the door as we left. We bought one by each band. It’s been that music which has been playing behind me as I type these words, which turn out to have almost nothing to say about today – the last Monday of the working year for me. Thank God.

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Monday, December 07, 2009

The first black man in Scotland

The first black man in Scotland


What boys we were.

Two innocents. Too young

but not quite young enough

to hide from truth.

And so we sheltered

where we stood,

behind the sideboard

in the kitchen

of that 60’s ‘room and kitchen’

in the grey east end

of no mean city

where he lived and worked

and died, the day

the first black man in Scotland

came to call.


A man as black as ebony.

Young with tight, black hair.

Obsidian eyes

in pools of white.

And yellow palms.

A voice like velvet.


We watched in awe.

We eavesdropped from our haven

as he told our father’s mother

how her husband fell;

redundant legs that buckled

as he clutched his chest

and raised a hand forlornly

to clasp the outstretched arm

of the first black man in Scotland,

who caught him

as he tumbled down to God

while they waited in a queue

for a bus that never came.


And as our father thanked

the first black man in Scotland,

then showed him to the door,

my father’s widowed mother

crossed the floor

to hold her hiding grandsons

in her arms. And weeping,

all colour drained out

of an empty, ghost-like face,

she said, oh boys,

your granda’s never coming home.


And we were mystified

but now a lifetime less

than innocent; lost

for words enough to say

what mattered on the day

the first black man in Scotland

came to tell the story

of our father’s father’s end.


But only this thought struck us

as we held our grandma tight:

We said, that man was black.

And she said, yes,

God bless him.


This month's poetry workshop in The Guardian has fathers as its theme. I stuck this in. It's not really about fatherhood but you never know.

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Friday, December 04, 2009

Restaurant Arras

Spike and I enjoyed the degustation menu of fish and vegetables at Restaurant Arras in Hickson Road as much as any meal we’ve dined on this year and more than most. I particularly enjoyed the scallop with pea number; the mulloway (? Jewfish apparently ?) and the tomato soup plus friend (which was astonishing, original and completely unexpected). I enjoyed the snapper too (although it was a touch drier than I thought it needed to be). The final selection (an alternative version of the rocky road) didn’t quite add to the totality of the experience; it didn’t complement the preceding dishes, maybe seemed a little overwhelming. It might get the response it deserves as a stand-alone sweet rather than the final component of the degustation list. Spike enjoyed your wine selection, particularly the port aperitif, the first French white and the Oregon red.

The meal took over three hours from start to finish. As a result we missed Waiting For Guinness at The Wharf, the reason we were out and about. Sorry Spike ... Big Mac next time.

We read about Arras in the blog, the unbearable lightness of being hungry. Glad we found it.

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