A day at the cricket can be entertaining, it can be educational, it can be both and it can be neither.
To watch the Australian batting order dismantle themselves on Day 3 of the Fourth Ashes Test Match was depressing. My 12 year old brother in law put it best: first two sessions good, last session miserable.
Firstly, there was the galactically poor judgement of Shane Watson. Anyone who could advocate his elevation to the Test Captaincy after this demonstration of what not to do must have rocks in their head.
In order to provide some context, the Australian openers in Watson and Hughes were scoring freely, but also pushing the fielding team with enterprising running between the wickets. However, this was when the ball was pushed into the spacious MCG outfield, as Watson and Hughes regularly turned twos into threes.
Turning zeroes into ones is a harder task, and one Watson failed at miserably as he ran out his partner who was looking good and in need of a confidence building extended stay in the middle. So much for that plan as Hughes was left short, and the rot began on a pitch that gave little aid to the bowling attack.
Clearly a poor or ordinary throw at the stumps can turn a dicey run into a safe run. On the other hand, not using the bat to defend an inswinger on the diminishing bounce of the MCG drop in wicket was a clear example of Watson's complete lack of judgement. If he had played a shot, he would not have been out. It is clear now that there is good judgement, there is bad judgement, and there is Watson judgement.
The next two men in the batting order provided much the same option on the menu, but while I feel no sympathy for Michael Clarke, I feel plenty for Ricky Ponting. Determined to make his stay at the crease time consuming, he resolved to play at the ball only when required. With his broken finger filled with anaesthetic, he struggled his way to 20 runs before the curtain came down, another inswinger finding the inside of the bat and the fullness of the stumps.
Ponting trudged off a defeated man. It is clear he is finished as a test cricketer, not only defeated on skill and ability, but also in heart. The only thing he can do now is hurt his legacy, as players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid get to enjoy a swansong, away from the harsh interrogation of character being captain or batting number three provide. Ponting has become a victim of Australian toughness in a way Steve Waugh never did.
Watching Michael Clarke, I made the comment he wouldn't get a game for St Kilda CC 2nds. After unbelievably charging Graeme Swann on the first ball he faced from him, only to miss the ball (fortunately Matt Prior did as well), he then decided to be completely subservient to Swann's whims, letting the cocky English spinner dictate terms until Swann finally decided to stop playing with him and put Clarke, and more importantly us watching, out of our collective misery.
Swann is the barometer of the English team. He is energetic, feeding off his own success and the reaction it gets from the Barmy Army and other English supporters, who were clearly much too numerous at the MCG for economic benefit to allow. Maybe the Aussie Dollar needs to hit parity with the Pound before all those loud Poms stay at home to be snowed under and finally silenced.
Back to Swann: you need to hit him out of the attack. By the time Peter Siddle and Brad Haddin were doing the right thing on the fourth morning, it was too late. Siddle made 40 by whacking Swann down the ground, and Siddle is a solid number 9/10 batsman.
Clarke just sat there pushing the ball back to Swann time and time again, like a kid being pushed in the chest by a bigger kid until he starts crying. Clarke needed to literally knock the smile from Swann's face, and instead he just embarrassed himself.
Clarke's career showed all the promise of maybe a all time great of Australian cricket, but at the moment I think I'd rather Damien Martyn's career than Clarke's.
Michael Hussey played his most uncharacteristic shot of the series, but while Hussey has plenty of credits in the bank, he won't be around for the next Ashes and should announce Sydney will be his last Test Match. Better to go while they miss you and all that guff.
The best innings of the day to watch was Steven Smith's. He had a crack, and while his technique doesn't look great, his ability to just play his game regardless of circumstances is more than encouraging. Smith is clearly one to stick with, and stick with at number six. The fact he is a wrist spinner will help him succeed, especially against the likes of England, the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand, who don't face wrist spinners much and therefore don't like facing wrist spin.
The lack of fight by the Australians, personified in the once talented but now unable batting of Michael Clarke, was the most disappointing thing about a day at the cricket. Let's hope the inclusion of some new blood in the top six, and the collection of a solid bowling attack, will enable the road to our next Ashes triumph to be a short one. But if a twelve year old is pencilling in 2017 as our next series win against the old enemy, who am I to argue?
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sledging: It's for the best
It took almost three years, but the Australian Cricket Team is starting to put the after effects of the Harbhajan Singh - Andrew Symonds incident behind it.
I opined in this space during the disastrous South African series in 2008/09 that the Australians were too quiet on the field, and this reflected a state of mind created by the media furore after the New Years' Test of 2008 versus India. At that time, Graeme Smith even commented publicly about the lack of any chatter on the field from the Australians.
The furore was to blame for this retraction of the Australian Cricket Team into their collective shells. Despite the clear, indisputable fact that it was the Indian and not the Australian who used the racial slur, the Indian media went into a frenzy. Well, that is not entirely accurate - they're always in a frenzy. For the ideal paradigm, as Obama is for Fox News, Australia is for the Indian media.
Generally, Australians play hard. They use any legitimate means to unsettle opponents, and they do this to opponents of all colours and creeds.
The Australians rediscovered the art of sledging at the WACA Ground, but only after Kevin Pietersen stirred the sleeping giant by verballing Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was suddenly more emotionally involved in the contest, and produced a spell that turned the test match and perhaps the series.
Suddenly, the Aussies were sledging the English, and this is for the better, because a verbally aggressive Australian side is usually a successful one. However, this on-field banter, despite being obvious to all and sundry watching at home on the High Definition TV sets, did not set off the left-wing sporting intelligensia of the Fairfax press and their associated cheering brigade the way it did when we were playing India. To sledge a white South African playing for England is A-OK, but to do it to an Indian of colour is racism and shames all Australians. What tosh.
I don't really care if the Australians are liked or make friends. They are paid, very well in fact, to win games of cricket, and they lost a whole bunch of them quietly, but only when they started to show some real backbone and started to talk back to an English line-up starting to resemble their supporters for annoyance and arrogance, they started playing better cricket and the results came swiftly and dramatically.
So, here's to the Australia of old, in it to win it, taking no prisoners, and not caring what people outside of the team think about their manners and other such bunkum. On to Melbourne for Boxing Day, and hopefully the Christmas spirit of generosity won't extend to the field of contest.
I opined in this space during the disastrous South African series in 2008/09 that the Australians were too quiet on the field, and this reflected a state of mind created by the media furore after the New Years' Test of 2008 versus India. At that time, Graeme Smith even commented publicly about the lack of any chatter on the field from the Australians.
The furore was to blame for this retraction of the Australian Cricket Team into their collective shells. Despite the clear, indisputable fact that it was the Indian and not the Australian who used the racial slur, the Indian media went into a frenzy. Well, that is not entirely accurate - they're always in a frenzy. For the ideal paradigm, as Obama is for Fox News, Australia is for the Indian media.
Generally, Australians play hard. They use any legitimate means to unsettle opponents, and they do this to opponents of all colours and creeds.
The Australians rediscovered the art of sledging at the WACA Ground, but only after Kevin Pietersen stirred the sleeping giant by verballing Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was suddenly more emotionally involved in the contest, and produced a spell that turned the test match and perhaps the series.
Suddenly, the Aussies were sledging the English, and this is for the better, because a verbally aggressive Australian side is usually a successful one. However, this on-field banter, despite being obvious to all and sundry watching at home on the High Definition TV sets, did not set off the left-wing sporting intelligensia of the Fairfax press and their associated cheering brigade the way it did when we were playing India. To sledge a white South African playing for England is A-OK, but to do it to an Indian of colour is racism and shames all Australians. What tosh.
I don't really care if the Australians are liked or make friends. They are paid, very well in fact, to win games of cricket, and they lost a whole bunch of them quietly, but only when they started to show some real backbone and started to talk back to an English line-up starting to resemble their supporters for annoyance and arrogance, they started playing better cricket and the results came swiftly and dramatically.
So, here's to the Australia of old, in it to win it, taking no prisoners, and not caring what people outside of the team think about their manners and other such bunkum. On to Melbourne for Boxing Day, and hopefully the Christmas spirit of generosity won't extend to the field of contest.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Tanking for Dummies (and cricketers)
Before the expansion Suns and Giants came around to steal the AFL club's much beloved priority picks, it was in vogue, when met with a situation where finals were impossible, to try to ensure you won less than 5 matches for the year. This would mean an extra pick either at the start or the end of the first round, depending on the length of a club's malaise.
Well, considering the Cricket Australia selection panel's desperate ability to grasp onto any hope of a reversal of fortune before making any sort of significant change to the side, the reality is clear that for the long term success of the Australian Test Team, they need to lose in Perth, in addition to the match already lost in Adelaide. The selectors need to be convinced as soon as possible that the Ashes are not for reclaiming this time around. Only then are the selectors likely to embrace the hard decisions that are now well past overdue.
We are now as far away from an Ashes series as one can be in the current cycle, overlooking the current "contest" we are playing in. The next Ashes are in England in 2013, more than two-and-a-half years away. So, if Test success is the pinnacle for Australian cricket, and the Ashes are the most important series for Australia, then now is the ideal time to start the rebuild. And it must start, rather surprisingly considering our inability to bowl anyone out without a hat trick, with the top seven in the batting order.
You see, this is where the age is. All of our bowlers are under 30, including the blokes who are on the outer depending on who got belted most recently. So, rather than recommend who is to be dropped and who is to be played, it would be better if the selectors just settled on a line-up and gave them some time to work together.
The top seven is a different story entirely. If the Australian Test team is to renew and rebuild, some very hard decisions need to be made about the top and middle order of the batting.
Take Simon Katich for example. As tough and courageous as he is, he doesn't convert enough of his scores into hundreds, has a Achilles injury that will keep him out for the rest of the series, and is well into his thirties. Hopefully Phil Hughes makes plenty of runs after he replaces Katich so the decision is made easy, but time's probably up for Katich's international career.
It would also be a tough decision to leave Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin out, as without these two Australia would be 2-0 down in the series. But no one can honestly expect them to be in England in 2013 in anything other than a commentary capacity, or perhaps hosting a tour of Aussie cricket fans. Haddin should probably survive the rest of the summer due to Tim Paine's injury, but Hussey is keeping a youngster out who needs experience.
It is clear that neither Ricky Ponting's captaincy, or batting, for that matter, are up to scratch, and at nearly 36, he should probably retire at the end of this summer to go and earn some serious coin hitting bowlers all over grounds the size of tennis courts in the IPL.
There is no defence for Marcus North - there should be a riot if he survives to Perth.
That leaves Shane Watson and Michael Clarke, who should be retained. Watson is a bankable 50 runs at the top of the order, and a valuable change bowler who makes the batsman play and can swing the old ball. Clarke is still one of the two or three most talented cricketers in the country, but the sooner he gives away the Twenty20 garbage, the better for all and sundry.
Anyway, here's my side for Perth, and hopefully the selector's side for Melbourne:
Hughes
Watson
Ponting (c) (to be replaced at the end of the season by Usman Khawaja)
Clarke
Ferguson
White
Haddin (to be replaced at the end of the season by Tim Paine)
Doherty
Johnson
Bollinger
Harris
Siddle - 12th man
I wish the selectors all the best, but I suspect they'll only have the courage of a dummy.
Well, considering the Cricket Australia selection panel's desperate ability to grasp onto any hope of a reversal of fortune before making any sort of significant change to the side, the reality is clear that for the long term success of the Australian Test Team, they need to lose in Perth, in addition to the match already lost in Adelaide. The selectors need to be convinced as soon as possible that the Ashes are not for reclaiming this time around. Only then are the selectors likely to embrace the hard decisions that are now well past overdue.
We are now as far away from an Ashes series as one can be in the current cycle, overlooking the current "contest" we are playing in. The next Ashes are in England in 2013, more than two-and-a-half years away. So, if Test success is the pinnacle for Australian cricket, and the Ashes are the most important series for Australia, then now is the ideal time to start the rebuild. And it must start, rather surprisingly considering our inability to bowl anyone out without a hat trick, with the top seven in the batting order.
You see, this is where the age is. All of our bowlers are under 30, including the blokes who are on the outer depending on who got belted most recently. So, rather than recommend who is to be dropped and who is to be played, it would be better if the selectors just settled on a line-up and gave them some time to work together.
The top seven is a different story entirely. If the Australian Test team is to renew and rebuild, some very hard decisions need to be made about the top and middle order of the batting.
Take Simon Katich for example. As tough and courageous as he is, he doesn't convert enough of his scores into hundreds, has a Achilles injury that will keep him out for the rest of the series, and is well into his thirties. Hopefully Phil Hughes makes plenty of runs after he replaces Katich so the decision is made easy, but time's probably up for Katich's international career.
It would also be a tough decision to leave Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin out, as without these two Australia would be 2-0 down in the series. But no one can honestly expect them to be in England in 2013 in anything other than a commentary capacity, or perhaps hosting a tour of Aussie cricket fans. Haddin should probably survive the rest of the summer due to Tim Paine's injury, but Hussey is keeping a youngster out who needs experience.
It is clear that neither Ricky Ponting's captaincy, or batting, for that matter, are up to scratch, and at nearly 36, he should probably retire at the end of this summer to go and earn some serious coin hitting bowlers all over grounds the size of tennis courts in the IPL.
There is no defence for Marcus North - there should be a riot if he survives to Perth.
That leaves Shane Watson and Michael Clarke, who should be retained. Watson is a bankable 50 runs at the top of the order, and a valuable change bowler who makes the batsman play and can swing the old ball. Clarke is still one of the two or three most talented cricketers in the country, but the sooner he gives away the Twenty20 garbage, the better for all and sundry.
Anyway, here's my side for Perth, and hopefully the selector's side for Melbourne:
Hughes
Watson
Ponting (c) (to be replaced at the end of the season by Usman Khawaja)
Clarke
Ferguson
White
Haddin (to be replaced at the end of the season by Tim Paine)
Doherty
Johnson
Bollinger
Harris
Siddle - 12th man
I wish the selectors all the best, but I suspect they'll only have the courage of a dummy.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Beware of One Term Too Many
If you have a relative in Queensland or New South Wales, it may be an idea to give them a call or drop them an email before the weekend.
If you do just that, ask them about the performance of their respective state governments since the last time the state went to the polls.
If you don't have a relative north of the Murray, you may just want to cast your minds back, if you can, to what happened after Paul Keating won the 1993 Federal Election, or John Cain won the 1988 Victorian State Election.
Australian political and electoral history is littered with examples of Labor Governments somehow eking out a final victory against the odds, only to keep on performing like the tired old government they were previous to the election, but managed to keep under wraps enough to get 50%+1 of the seats.
The writing was on the wall in 1988, with financial disasters completely of the Cain Government's making just about to become public knowledge, coupled with the global downturn associated with the stockmarket crash of 1987, conspiring to create a most important election. Only nobody knew it, and after Jeff Kennett made a silly remark about not needing the Nationals to govern, any chance of a change of government was very slim. We all know how that turned out, with the state exponentially more of a economic basketcase in 1992 than it was in 1988. Those were a very costly four years to the people of Victoria.
To a lesser extent, the surprise victory of Paul Keating and his government in 1993 against the John Hewson-led Coalition led to a three year term of indifference to real problems facing middle Australia. Keating instead chose to focus on the Republic, the Arts and Aboriginal Affairs, in a vain attempt to reshape Australia in his own image and likeness. Clearly a government governing for one term too many.
These all pale in comparison with the sideshow that has become the New South Wales ALP Government. This term, after Morris Iemma beat the unelectable Peter Debnam in 2007, has seen three Premiers, voluminous changes to the ministry, corruption allegations related to the urban planning processes, criminal proceedings against former ministers, and swings of biblical proportions in a number of by elections caused by the resignation, whether voluntary or forced by political embarassment, of many members of this dysfunctional government. To call it a dog's breakfast would be an insult only to what canines eat first thing in the morning.
While you may accuse me of hyperbole, the truth is 2010 in Victoria feels a lot like 2007 in New South Wales, or 2009 in Queensland, or 1988 here in Victoria. It doesn't appear to be an important election, but , at the time, neither did the ones I mentioned, with the exception of the 1993 Federal Election. Unfortunately, you sometimes don't know how important an election was until it is over and done with.
Sometimes it is said about sporting figures that it is better to retire while you are missed, rather than being forced out after your welcome has been warn out. So it is in politics, and it is certainly time for John Brumby and his crew of merry meddlers to be put out to pasture. Time for a change.
If you do just that, ask them about the performance of their respective state governments since the last time the state went to the polls.
If you don't have a relative north of the Murray, you may just want to cast your minds back, if you can, to what happened after Paul Keating won the 1993 Federal Election, or John Cain won the 1988 Victorian State Election.
Australian political and electoral history is littered with examples of Labor Governments somehow eking out a final victory against the odds, only to keep on performing like the tired old government they were previous to the election, but managed to keep under wraps enough to get 50%+1 of the seats.
The writing was on the wall in 1988, with financial disasters completely of the Cain Government's making just about to become public knowledge, coupled with the global downturn associated with the stockmarket crash of 1987, conspiring to create a most important election. Only nobody knew it, and after Jeff Kennett made a silly remark about not needing the Nationals to govern, any chance of a change of government was very slim. We all know how that turned out, with the state exponentially more of a economic basketcase in 1992 than it was in 1988. Those were a very costly four years to the people of Victoria.
To a lesser extent, the surprise victory of Paul Keating and his government in 1993 against the John Hewson-led Coalition led to a three year term of indifference to real problems facing middle Australia. Keating instead chose to focus on the Republic, the Arts and Aboriginal Affairs, in a vain attempt to reshape Australia in his own image and likeness. Clearly a government governing for one term too many.
These all pale in comparison with the sideshow that has become the New South Wales ALP Government. This term, after Morris Iemma beat the unelectable Peter Debnam in 2007, has seen three Premiers, voluminous changes to the ministry, corruption allegations related to the urban planning processes, criminal proceedings against former ministers, and swings of biblical proportions in a number of by elections caused by the resignation, whether voluntary or forced by political embarassment, of many members of this dysfunctional government. To call it a dog's breakfast would be an insult only to what canines eat first thing in the morning.
While you may accuse me of hyperbole, the truth is 2010 in Victoria feels a lot like 2007 in New South Wales, or 2009 in Queensland, or 1988 here in Victoria. It doesn't appear to be an important election, but , at the time, neither did the ones I mentioned, with the exception of the 1993 Federal Election. Unfortunately, you sometimes don't know how important an election was until it is over and done with.
Sometimes it is said about sporting figures that it is better to retire while you are missed, rather than being forced out after your welcome has been warn out. So it is in politics, and it is certainly time for John Brumby and his crew of merry meddlers to be put out to pasture. Time for a change.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Right Kind of Campaign
Victorian Election pretty boring, huh? Good. As it should be.
Recently, we've seen a increase in the amount of loud hyperbole coming from politicians. Some of it can seem to be lacking thought, and some of it can seem downright psychic, like Joe Hockey's comments on the banks, but for many politicians and elected representatives, it seems like they only have one volume that is constantly stuck on 11.
Take the midterm congressional elections in the United States as the best example. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives behind a groundswell of resentment at the economy, Washington politics, and reforms proposed by President Barack Obama, such as those relating to health care, the financial industry, economic stimulus packages, and the military.
Americans know and love hyperbole better than most, and their politicians even more so. The use of emotive terms like "death panels" and "refounding our constitution" are meant to elicit visceral, emotional response, and mostly they do from citizens who feel very strongly about being patriotic to the American ideal.
The problem is that this sort of fearmongering doesn't address the real issues facing the US Congress and the United States as a whole: a poorly performing economy, a Federal Government laden with trillions of dollars of debt with no end in sight and no program to reduce the deficit with any chance of being approved by Congress, and fighting two wars on the other side of the world without a realistic exit strategy.
The number of high-profile Republicans proposing realistic, yet necessarily drastic, solutions to United States' crippling debt, could be fit into a small room. And because many of these people are libertarians, their lack of support for moral issues, such as outlawing abortion or preventing same-sex marriages, make them unattractive to many Republican "values" voters.
So you get elections with, as Shakespeare put it, "a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing". That is why it is so refreshing to have a low key election campaign here in Victoria, with the focus on announcing programs to address the problems facing Victoria and her citizenry.
While the media shows many signs of tiring at this understated campaign, focussing on "process stories" such as preferences and candidates flip-flopping about whether they will remain the endorsed candidates, both campaigns have on the main, with the exception of the entirely hateable Rob Hulls, stuck on a policy oriented message. This is to be commended.
Hopefully people will continue to engage with the leaders between now and November 27, and this engagement will produce a result that provides real action for all Victorians.
Hopefully the campaign will not degenerate into namecalling and the like, no matter what Rob Hulls wants.
So, don't be too unhappy this election is not very entertaining: that's the way it should be.
Recently, we've seen a increase in the amount of loud hyperbole coming from politicians. Some of it can seem to be lacking thought, and some of it can seem downright psychic, like Joe Hockey's comments on the banks, but for many politicians and elected representatives, it seems like they only have one volume that is constantly stuck on 11.
Take the midterm congressional elections in the United States as the best example. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives behind a groundswell of resentment at the economy, Washington politics, and reforms proposed by President Barack Obama, such as those relating to health care, the financial industry, economic stimulus packages, and the military.
Americans know and love hyperbole better than most, and their politicians even more so. The use of emotive terms like "death panels" and "refounding our constitution" are meant to elicit visceral, emotional response, and mostly they do from citizens who feel very strongly about being patriotic to the American ideal.
The problem is that this sort of fearmongering doesn't address the real issues facing the US Congress and the United States as a whole: a poorly performing economy, a Federal Government laden with trillions of dollars of debt with no end in sight and no program to reduce the deficit with any chance of being approved by Congress, and fighting two wars on the other side of the world without a realistic exit strategy.
The number of high-profile Republicans proposing realistic, yet necessarily drastic, solutions to United States' crippling debt, could be fit into a small room. And because many of these people are libertarians, their lack of support for moral issues, such as outlawing abortion or preventing same-sex marriages, make them unattractive to many Republican "values" voters.
So you get elections with, as Shakespeare put it, "a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing". That is why it is so refreshing to have a low key election campaign here in Victoria, with the focus on announcing programs to address the problems facing Victoria and her citizenry.
While the media shows many signs of tiring at this understated campaign, focussing on "process stories" such as preferences and candidates flip-flopping about whether they will remain the endorsed candidates, both campaigns have on the main, with the exception of the entirely hateable Rob Hulls, stuck on a policy oriented message. This is to be commended.
Hopefully people will continue to engage with the leaders between now and November 27, and this engagement will produce a result that provides real action for all Victorians.
Hopefully the campaign will not degenerate into namecalling and the like, no matter what Rob Hulls wants.
So, don't be too unhappy this election is not very entertaining: that's the way it should be.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Sands of Time
This week the great Sachin Tendulkar passed 14,000 Test runs, while amassing his 49th Test Century, both clear records. It caused some in the media to enter into a discussion about whether Tendulkar should be regarded as the equal, or perhaps a superior cricketer to Don Bradman.
This debate is now going on all over the world, and while also possibly feeding into a rivalry between Australia and India which borders on the unhealthy, it is getting heated with many cricket followers, despite having never seen Bradman play, having strong opinions about the subject.
I'm not going to really get into the Bradman v Tendulkar debate, other than to say that Bradman scored all of his runs on uncovered pitches, and played most of his Test Cricket against the second best side in the world, so add this to Bradman's amazing average, and Bradman still remains the best, and probably always will.
However, it feeds into a deeper trend about disparaging, even if only by the mere mention of another in serious comparison, of many sportspeople who came before.
Haydn Bunton made his name in Aussie Rules at the same time as Bradman was dominating attacks and scoring a century every third time he batted. He won 3 Brownlow Medals before turning 27, and then won three Sandover Medals in the WAFL.
His 122 Brownlow votes in 119 games stands alone as the most incredible feat in polling votes in our game, and is also the best candidate for a stat like Bradman's average of 99.94.
But Bunton died young (he's been dead for 55 years), and his legacy has been mostly forgotten.
In more recent times, the AFL awarded the Full Back position in the team of the VFL/AFL's first 100 seasons to a then current player, Stephen Silvagni, over Jack Regan, the Collingwood champion of the 1930s. Regan was known as the "Prince of Full Backs", and duelled with Bob Pratt at the height of his powers.
Silvagni's feats were fresh in our minds, while Regan's had been consigned to history, forgotten in the deep archived compactus of the game. Numerous other examples exist of such thinking.
William Goldman, the famous and successful screenwriter, co-authored a book on sports in 1987 with Mike Lupica titled "Wait Til Next Year". In a chapter by Goldman defending Wilt Chamberlain, he gave us this::
"The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It's gradual. It begins before you're aware that it's begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. It really is a battle to the death."
He suggested the best players of that day, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, would also get the same treatment as many that had gone before, with pundits suggesting that "they couldn't play today".
While it is both honourable and right to celebrate the genius that is Sachin Tendulkar, we should never forget what those incredible sportspeople who achieved their greatness before the 24-7 sports blogosphere Twitter media circus became the norm.
As Halls of Fame become fat with the mere passing of time, we should also occassionally take time to recognise those that revolutionised the game with pioneering play, whether it be the way Bill Russell played defence, to how Polly Farmer handballed, to how Usain Bolt is changing sprinting by his mere size.
Without Bunton we would not have had Judd. Without Regan we would not have had Scarlett. And without Bradman, we would not have had Tendulkar. The best, often, is not the most recent in the memory. Let us remember that.
This debate is now going on all over the world, and while also possibly feeding into a rivalry between Australia and India which borders on the unhealthy, it is getting heated with many cricket followers, despite having never seen Bradman play, having strong opinions about the subject.
I'm not going to really get into the Bradman v Tendulkar debate, other than to say that Bradman scored all of his runs on uncovered pitches, and played most of his Test Cricket against the second best side in the world, so add this to Bradman's amazing average, and Bradman still remains the best, and probably always will.
However, it feeds into a deeper trend about disparaging, even if only by the mere mention of another in serious comparison, of many sportspeople who came before.
Haydn Bunton made his name in Aussie Rules at the same time as Bradman was dominating attacks and scoring a century every third time he batted. He won 3 Brownlow Medals before turning 27, and then won three Sandover Medals in the WAFL.
His 122 Brownlow votes in 119 games stands alone as the most incredible feat in polling votes in our game, and is also the best candidate for a stat like Bradman's average of 99.94.
But Bunton died young (he's been dead for 55 years), and his legacy has been mostly forgotten.
In more recent times, the AFL awarded the Full Back position in the team of the VFL/AFL's first 100 seasons to a then current player, Stephen Silvagni, over Jack Regan, the Collingwood champion of the 1930s. Regan was known as the "Prince of Full Backs", and duelled with Bob Pratt at the height of his powers.
Silvagni's feats were fresh in our minds, while Regan's had been consigned to history, forgotten in the deep archived compactus of the game. Numerous other examples exist of such thinking.
William Goldman, the famous and successful screenwriter, co-authored a book on sports in 1987 with Mike Lupica titled "Wait Til Next Year". In a chapter by Goldman defending Wilt Chamberlain, he gave us this::
"The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It's gradual. It begins before you're aware that it's begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. It really is a battle to the death."
He suggested the best players of that day, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, would also get the same treatment as many that had gone before, with pundits suggesting that "they couldn't play today".
While it is both honourable and right to celebrate the genius that is Sachin Tendulkar, we should never forget what those incredible sportspeople who achieved their greatness before the 24-7 sports blogosphere Twitter media circus became the norm.
As Halls of Fame become fat with the mere passing of time, we should also occassionally take time to recognise those that revolutionised the game with pioneering play, whether it be the way Bill Russell played defence, to how Polly Farmer handballed, to how Usain Bolt is changing sprinting by his mere size.
Without Bunton we would not have had Judd. Without Regan we would not have had Scarlett. And without Bradman, we would not have had Tendulkar. The best, often, is not the most recent in the memory. Let us remember that.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Time for an Appointed Speaker
If you thought a pair was a piece of fruit that was a not-so-distant relative of the apple, then you haven't been keeping an eye (or ear) on what has been happening in Australian Federal Politics recently.
A hung parliament, the result of Australia not really deciding on August 21, leads to all sorts of issues, not the least of which is the common practice of the Speaker of the House being taken from the government ranks, leaving them with one less vote on the floor than they normally would have, except when there is a tie when the Speaker can cast a deliberative vote to break the tie.
Now, I'm not calling on Harry Jenkins to use that vote to ensure a premiership for St Kilda. But the razor thin majority the Gillard Government has in the House of Representatives is effectively halved when Jenkins gets up in his high chair and starts presiding over parliamentary proceedings.
This means that any planned government travel during sitting days, illness, parental leave or unexplained absence at an inconvenient time could leave the government without the required numbers to pass legislation, regardless of the whims of Messrs Bandt, Wilkie, Oakeshott and Windsor.
Government ministers need, on occasion, to travel overseas to meet important people, and that opportunity may not always present itself during a week where parliament is not sitting. If Tony Abbott insists on playing hardball with parliamentary numbers, this may render the House of Representatives largely unworkable from a government standpoint until the minister returns to the House.
Which begs the question: why does the Speaker still need to be a member of the House?
It has been mentioned during the process to attract the support of the independents previously mentioned that taking the role of the Speaker would render the member unable to represent their constituents through Adjournment Debates, Matters of Public Importance, Member's Statements, and debates on individual pieces of legislation. To summarise, the Speaker cannot make any statements in the House except to rule on the conduct of the House and its members.
Despite the pay rise and additional staff, this makes the Speaker's job a less attractive one. You also need to be ever present in Parliament House in case of a division, and you need to be an expert on all the Standing Orders and Sessional Orders of the House.
Surely, this is a job that could be given to an appointed public servant, above party politics, expert on parliamentary procedure and practice, who would administer the rules of the House, without having a say on the composition of those rules, which would remain the responsibility of the lawmakers themselves.
In this country, governments appoint judges whose role is to interpret and administer law, but not to write law. The Speaker of the House would be a legal expert on the government payroll but administratively independent, part of the Department of the Parliament.
The person would also not be an elected member of a political party, and would therefore be above accusations of bias and partiality in their rulings in the House, which has often been a problem with governments usually enjoying more favour from the Speaker's chair than oppositions.
This would leave all 150 members of the House of Representatives free to represent their constituencies equally, and would also reflect the totality of the will of the people expressed at the most recent general election. This could also be applied to the Senate, although the reasons relating to representation, as Senators do not represent small constituencies but large states, are not as compelling.
Surely it is time that Australia leads the way, as it did with the secret ballot and the extension of the vote to women, in this important area of parliamentary practice, and made the Speaker of the House an appointed official, rather than a elected politician.
A hung parliament, the result of Australia not really deciding on August 21, leads to all sorts of issues, not the least of which is the common practice of the Speaker of the House being taken from the government ranks, leaving them with one less vote on the floor than they normally would have, except when there is a tie when the Speaker can cast a deliberative vote to break the tie.
Now, I'm not calling on Harry Jenkins to use that vote to ensure a premiership for St Kilda. But the razor thin majority the Gillard Government has in the House of Representatives is effectively halved when Jenkins gets up in his high chair and starts presiding over parliamentary proceedings.
This means that any planned government travel during sitting days, illness, parental leave or unexplained absence at an inconvenient time could leave the government without the required numbers to pass legislation, regardless of the whims of Messrs Bandt, Wilkie, Oakeshott and Windsor.
Government ministers need, on occasion, to travel overseas to meet important people, and that opportunity may not always present itself during a week where parliament is not sitting. If Tony Abbott insists on playing hardball with parliamentary numbers, this may render the House of Representatives largely unworkable from a government standpoint until the minister returns to the House.
Which begs the question: why does the Speaker still need to be a member of the House?
It has been mentioned during the process to attract the support of the independents previously mentioned that taking the role of the Speaker would render the member unable to represent their constituents through Adjournment Debates, Matters of Public Importance, Member's Statements, and debates on individual pieces of legislation. To summarise, the Speaker cannot make any statements in the House except to rule on the conduct of the House and its members.
Despite the pay rise and additional staff, this makes the Speaker's job a less attractive one. You also need to be ever present in Parliament House in case of a division, and you need to be an expert on all the Standing Orders and Sessional Orders of the House.
Surely, this is a job that could be given to an appointed public servant, above party politics, expert on parliamentary procedure and practice, who would administer the rules of the House, without having a say on the composition of those rules, which would remain the responsibility of the lawmakers themselves.
In this country, governments appoint judges whose role is to interpret and administer law, but not to write law. The Speaker of the House would be a legal expert on the government payroll but administratively independent, part of the Department of the Parliament.
The person would also not be an elected member of a political party, and would therefore be above accusations of bias and partiality in their rulings in the House, which has often been a problem with governments usually enjoying more favour from the Speaker's chair than oppositions.
This would leave all 150 members of the House of Representatives free to represent their constituencies equally, and would also reflect the totality of the will of the people expressed at the most recent general election. This could also be applied to the Senate, although the reasons relating to representation, as Senators do not represent small constituencies but large states, are not as compelling.
Surely it is time that Australia leads the way, as it did with the secret ballot and the extension of the vote to women, in this important area of parliamentary practice, and made the Speaker of the House an appointed official, rather than a elected politician.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Climate Change Policy - You Decide - NOW
While many in our society like to complain that our elected officials don't know what it going on in "the real world", or aren't in touch with the real issues facing "real Australians", the fact is that we elect them to do a job and run the country, the government, and the economy. Julia Gillard would like that to change.
Climate Change is one of the more contentious issues facing policy makers today. Not only do we have a debate about whether the climate is changing, we also have debates on whether we should have a debate (hard-line climate change believers like to use words like "we need to move on from debate", "the science is settled", and "there is a consensus"), whether it is caused by human activity, what we should do about it, and whether we should do anything if bigger and larger overall polluters like China and India do nothing, preferring economic growth to carbon reduction.
Regardless of what has occurred in the last three years, Kevin Rudd and the ALP ran at the 2007 election on a platform of introducing a scheme to reduce the amount of carbon Australia emits. Faced with a hostile Senate, filled with Liberals and Nationals who felt the scheme went too far, and Greens who felt the scheme didn't go far enough, the scheme did not pass the Senate and was not reintroduced by the Government, or used as a trigger for a Double Dissolution election.
Now, at the next election with Kevin Rudd relegated to local member and the ground shifting in this policy area, Julia Gillard wants to create a "Citizens Assembly" to develop a "consensus" on climate change.
The assembly, which would include 150 "ordinary Australians", would be "informed by experts" about climate change before making recommendations. The speech announcing this, of which The Australian has obtained a copy, apparently states "this must not just be a debate between experts ... it must be a real debate among involving many real Australians".
Firstly, I don't know who to be more offended for first, but experts are experts for a reason: they know what they are talking about. Could you imagine the government creating such an assembly to determine economic policy? Not in a million years. Also offensive is the implication that experts, or to put it more plainly, public servants, are not real Australians, but live in a land of make-believe called "Government land". They have mortgages, grocery and petrol bills, friends, hobbies, children, and all that other stuff that "real Australians" have as well.
It's also a significant abrogation of the responsibility of government, chosen from the party in the majority in the House of Representatives. We elect governments to govern.
There already exists a "Citizens Assembly", which has 150 "real Australians", informed by experts on various areas of policy and public administration: it's called the House of Representatives.
Gillard is being disingenuous as well as condescending and offensive when she plans to handball this key area of public policy, labelled by her predecessor and member of her party as "the greatest moral challenge of our time", off to 150 people, randomly selected like they have just won the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes.
What Gillard should do, considering she has been in Government for 32 months, is outline what she and her colleagues in the ALP is the best course of action regarding this issue, and if the Opposition offers a different policy, then let the people decide at an election, which we will be having on August 21. That way 13,000,000 Australians, rather than 150, can decide on policy direction the Commonwealth Government should head on Climate Change.
Australia needs better leadership than this, and this proposal demonstrates exactly why Gillard is unfit for office.
Climate Change is one of the more contentious issues facing policy makers today. Not only do we have a debate about whether the climate is changing, we also have debates on whether we should have a debate (hard-line climate change believers like to use words like "we need to move on from debate", "the science is settled", and "there is a consensus"), whether it is caused by human activity, what we should do about it, and whether we should do anything if bigger and larger overall polluters like China and India do nothing, preferring economic growth to carbon reduction.
Regardless of what has occurred in the last three years, Kevin Rudd and the ALP ran at the 2007 election on a platform of introducing a scheme to reduce the amount of carbon Australia emits. Faced with a hostile Senate, filled with Liberals and Nationals who felt the scheme went too far, and Greens who felt the scheme didn't go far enough, the scheme did not pass the Senate and was not reintroduced by the Government, or used as a trigger for a Double Dissolution election.
Now, at the next election with Kevin Rudd relegated to local member and the ground shifting in this policy area, Julia Gillard wants to create a "Citizens Assembly" to develop a "consensus" on climate change.
The assembly, which would include 150 "ordinary Australians", would be "informed by experts" about climate change before making recommendations. The speech announcing this, of which The Australian has obtained a copy, apparently states "this must not just be a debate between experts ... it must be a real debate among involving many real Australians".
Firstly, I don't know who to be more offended for first, but experts are experts for a reason: they know what they are talking about. Could you imagine the government creating such an assembly to determine economic policy? Not in a million years. Also offensive is the implication that experts, or to put it more plainly, public servants, are not real Australians, but live in a land of make-believe called "Government land". They have mortgages, grocery and petrol bills, friends, hobbies, children, and all that other stuff that "real Australians" have as well.
It's also a significant abrogation of the responsibility of government, chosen from the party in the majority in the House of Representatives. We elect governments to govern.
There already exists a "Citizens Assembly", which has 150 "real Australians", informed by experts on various areas of policy and public administration: it's called the House of Representatives.
Gillard is being disingenuous as well as condescending and offensive when she plans to handball this key area of public policy, labelled by her predecessor and member of her party as "the greatest moral challenge of our time", off to 150 people, randomly selected like they have just won the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes.
What Gillard should do, considering she has been in Government for 32 months, is outline what she and her colleagues in the ALP is the best course of action regarding this issue, and if the Opposition offers a different policy, then let the people decide at an election, which we will be having on August 21. That way 13,000,000 Australians, rather than 150, can decide on policy direction the Commonwealth Government should head on Climate Change.
Australia needs better leadership than this, and this proposal demonstrates exactly why Gillard is unfit for office.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Wonky Politics
Kevin Rudd apparently loves policy detail. "Policy wonk" is the term of endearment used most often to describe his way of doing things ("control freak" is not a term of endearment).
Rudd led a government that for all intents and purposes still exists. While Julia Gillard may have replaced Kevin Rudd as the leader of that government, Rudd himself is the only change to the government. The continuity is so set in stone that Ms Gillard has chosen to retain two "lame-duck" cabinet members who have indicated they will not continue in the cabinet past the next election.
Another way you can tell this is the same government is the way that they develop policy, which has demonstrated that suggesting Mr Rudd is a policy wonk is a little like suggesting Michael Barlow has an intact tibia bone.
This Rudd/Gillard Government has in fact a well earned reputation for glossing over policy detail in order to announce and implement policies and programs as soon as possible, for maximum PR effect.
The most glaring example under the previous Prime Minister was the insulation scheme. Rather than creating a much needed regulatory framework for the registration and examination of competency of tradespeople performing the work of installing insulation in private homes, the Rudd Government got the money into the economy as soon as possible. This was the main objective of the insulation scheme.
However, this dereliction of basic policy development, admitted by outgoing Finance Minister Linsday Tanner, contributed to thousands of homes becoming "live-wired", and the increase of activity also led to the deaths of a number of installers.
The provision of solar hot water heaters to various community used facilities was also another policy where the overarching objective overrode the proper development of policy detail, leading to football ovals across Australia
Unfortunately under our new Prime Minister little has changed. Ms Gillard announced that she had discussed with the President of East Timor the possibility of processing asylum seekers in the tiny nation.
Now, here's a lesson of what not to do in politics, especially government: don't think out loud about policy.
The result of Ms Gillard's thought bubble has been that the media has been taking her "plans" as official government policy. Only problem is that all Ms Gillard has done is talk to the President of East Timor, not the Prime Minister who would usually make this sort of decision, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Her total discussions with these national leaders has probably totalled about sixty minutes.
This policy of a processing facility for asylum seekers on East Timor is light on for detail, hasn't been agreed to by East Timor itself, and is opens Ms Gillard to accusations of hypocrisy, given her previous opposition to the Howard's Government "Pacific Solution", which also processed asylum seekers away from Australian soil.
If Ms Gillard wants to spend longer than 100 days in the Prime Minister's chair, then it may be an idea to increase the level of work done on important government policies between now and the election, or else it may be experienced former government minister Tony Abbott who gets her job.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Our latest Ex-Prime Minister
So how will history remember Kevin Rudd?
Let's start out by stating that things weren't nearly as bad for Rudd in the electorate as the mainstream media made it seem. This week's Newspoll, Morgan and Essential Research surveys all had the ALP with a small two-party-preferred lead. The man on the other side of the house, Tony Abbott, while differentiating himself emphatically as the anti-Rudd, is prone to bouts of public utterances that can bring more harm than good. There was a good chance he may say something refreshingly honest but possibly offensive between now and polling day.
However, the media had the die cast. Once the polls started diving after Rudd's backdown over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, he was unsalvageable as far as they were concerned. Bored by the new found stability in Opposition ranks, they played up a contest on the government benches.
After all this, still nothing would have happened today if Rudd didn't get suspicious and send one of his staffers, instead of himself, to count the numbers. It was around this time that Julia finally decided enough was enough, and relented to the pressure being brought on her by factional heavyweights inside the Parliamentary ALP. Rudd blinked and called for a spill he eventually didn't even contest.
Rudd now, despite his somewhat ridiculous choice to stay in Parliament past this upcoming election, will be consigned to the annals of history.
Rudd's greatest achievement was the avoidance of a recession that enveloped the rest of the developed world. While the more begrudging of us may try to take this away from Rudd by claiming that China's demand for our natural resources mean Rudd's measures were only slightly contributory to the economy's resilience, the stimulus did get a massive amount of money into the market, which powered demand and kept the economy growing.
Rudd's real problem with his stimulus legacy is not just the rows of unneeded, unused solar hot water heaters littering the outside of sporting pavilions around the country, or the volume of school halls built over the last few years, but the incompetent handling of the insulation scheme.
In short, flooding an unregulated trade with tons of cash is asking for trouble, without serious regulation and bureaucracy in place before hand. The scheme was simply asking to not only be exploited by fly-by-nighters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of John and Jenny Q Taxpayer, but was also making the always possible safety problems that are associated with working in the roof space of residential homes more likely. In short, more tradespeople, not necessarily trained and certainly not regulated, in the roofs of homes all over the country, working in cramped spaces in close proximity to electrical wiring.
But, by admission, the Rudd Government didn't have "time to cross the 'i's and dot the 't's." It would have been better for everyone if they had made the time.
These were the most grandiose of Rudd's great schemes. He apologised to both the Stolen and Forgotten Generations, and signed the Kyoto Protocols, but these were all symbolic measures.
Rudd won't be remembered as well or as fondly as Gough Whitlam, who became a Labor hero by failing grandly and losing power incredibly. Some of Whitlam's measures still endure today, which is unlikely to be said of Rudd's.
Unfortunately for Rudd, the post-war Prime Minister he will most likely be coupled with will be William McMahon, in that, for many, the Rudd years will be completely forgettable. He will never be judged to be the equal of the man he defeated in 2007, or the great reformers Hawke and Keating. He will never be remembered as having the infamy of a Malcolm Fraser, the incredible circumstances of the Gorton premiership, the electoral success and demise of Harold Holt, the endurance of Menzies, the gumption of Chifley or the toughness of Curtin.
Rudd's greatest punishment may be, for someone whom it has been suggested longed for a legacy and a place in the collective memory of the nation, that he, and his time as Prime Minister, may be largely forgotten. For that, he can blame the media. He can blame the ALP factional heavyweights. He can blame the polls. But he should also keep a little bit of the blame for himself.
Let's start out by stating that things weren't nearly as bad for Rudd in the electorate as the mainstream media made it seem. This week's Newspoll, Morgan and Essential Research surveys all had the ALP with a small two-party-preferred lead. The man on the other side of the house, Tony Abbott, while differentiating himself emphatically as the anti-Rudd, is prone to bouts of public utterances that can bring more harm than good. There was a good chance he may say something refreshingly honest but possibly offensive between now and polling day.
However, the media had the die cast. Once the polls started diving after Rudd's backdown over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, he was unsalvageable as far as they were concerned. Bored by the new found stability in Opposition ranks, they played up a contest on the government benches.
After all this, still nothing would have happened today if Rudd didn't get suspicious and send one of his staffers, instead of himself, to count the numbers. It was around this time that Julia finally decided enough was enough, and relented to the pressure being brought on her by factional heavyweights inside the Parliamentary ALP. Rudd blinked and called for a spill he eventually didn't even contest.
Rudd now, despite his somewhat ridiculous choice to stay in Parliament past this upcoming election, will be consigned to the annals of history.
Rudd's greatest achievement was the avoidance of a recession that enveloped the rest of the developed world. While the more begrudging of us may try to take this away from Rudd by claiming that China's demand for our natural resources mean Rudd's measures were only slightly contributory to the economy's resilience, the stimulus did get a massive amount of money into the market, which powered demand and kept the economy growing.
Rudd's real problem with his stimulus legacy is not just the rows of unneeded, unused solar hot water heaters littering the outside of sporting pavilions around the country, or the volume of school halls built over the last few years, but the incompetent handling of the insulation scheme.
In short, flooding an unregulated trade with tons of cash is asking for trouble, without serious regulation and bureaucracy in place before hand. The scheme was simply asking to not only be exploited by fly-by-nighters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of John and Jenny Q Taxpayer, but was also making the always possible safety problems that are associated with working in the roof space of residential homes more likely. In short, more tradespeople, not necessarily trained and certainly not regulated, in the roofs of homes all over the country, working in cramped spaces in close proximity to electrical wiring.
But, by admission, the Rudd Government didn't have "time to cross the 'i's and dot the 't's." It would have been better for everyone if they had made the time.
These were the most grandiose of Rudd's great schemes. He apologised to both the Stolen and Forgotten Generations, and signed the Kyoto Protocols, but these were all symbolic measures.
Rudd won't be remembered as well or as fondly as Gough Whitlam, who became a Labor hero by failing grandly and losing power incredibly. Some of Whitlam's measures still endure today, which is unlikely to be said of Rudd's.
Unfortunately for Rudd, the post-war Prime Minister he will most likely be coupled with will be William McMahon, in that, for many, the Rudd years will be completely forgettable. He will never be judged to be the equal of the man he defeated in 2007, or the great reformers Hawke and Keating. He will never be remembered as having the infamy of a Malcolm Fraser, the incredible circumstances of the Gorton premiership, the electoral success and demise of Harold Holt, the endurance of Menzies, the gumption of Chifley or the toughness of Curtin.
Rudd's greatest punishment may be, for someone whom it has been suggested longed for a legacy and a place in the collective memory of the nation, that he, and his time as Prime Minister, may be largely forgotten. For that, he can blame the media. He can blame the ALP factional heavyweights. He can blame the polls. But he should also keep a little bit of the blame for himself.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The last week - Ireland
Land of my ancestors. We finished our trip in Ireland.
First up was a dinner with my cousin Antoinette and her family. Her son, Bobby, can only be described as a card. Very energetic, very enthusiastic, emphatically male and 22 years old. Amy, his older sister, is acerbic, but she remembers fondly me teaching her how to slide down the bannister when I visited in 1991. Sophie, the youngest, wasn't around then, and she's still going through high school, which in Ireland has an incomprehensible structure for those from Australia.
I finally had my first proper Irish Guinness, and it was worth the wait. I would return to this elixir when we got back to Dublin.
After leaving Dun Laoghaire on Saturday morning, we drove through Kilkenny on our way to Rossdale in County Wexford. This time we were driving a Mazda, on the correct side of the road.
Kilkenny is officially a city, but it really is a nice, medium sized, town. As we got closer to the coast and the south, the weather got windier and colder. Once we checked into our B&B, we found out very quickly there isn't much to do in Rossdale if you don't play golf. So we played golf.
We actually went to the driving range, where Rose didn't do too well and I got my usual welts on my hands from the grips on the clubs. My slice reared its ugly head on a regular basis. The evening was spent much better, when after dinner, we discovered that the video collection in the sitting room had Aussie favourite Strictly Ballroom, which, for some inexplicable reason, Rose hadn't seen. I saw it in the cinema and loved it, but Rose thought it was silly, despite one of the best chill scenes ever.
The Sunday was spent driving past Cork (which we were warned to stay away from due to crapness) on our way to Killarney in County Kerry. Before embarking on this trip, we sampled every Irish person's favourite Sunday morning excursion: going to mass celebrated in a modern church by an odd looking man with classic Irish hair. His sermon on circumcision was a comedic highlight of the trip.
Killarney has a beautiful national park right next to the city centre, which stretches on to the nearby mountains. After a short wander through this wonderful park, we went and got some dinner. Two plates of magnificent Irish Stew went down a treat.
Then I decided to purchase Rose a tin whistle, which is something I regretted for the rest of our tour around country Ireland. Whenever the radio decided it was too far away from anywhere to get a signal, Rose would decide to attempt to play the whistle, and the resulting noise pollution was almost unbearable. Serves me right for buying it for her.
The next day, between trying to stick gauze in my ears, we drove up to Galway. We stopped in the town for one main purpose - to buy some soda bread and some Kerrygold butter. The best bread and butter combination in the world. I will not argue about this.
Then we drove off to the Connemara mountains, which are some of the most rugged, inhospitable yet incredibly breathtaking mountains anyone could ever see. Mountain sheep wandered on the side of the road looking for feed, and we pulled over to eat our simple yet delicious improvised picnic of bread and butter. While it was difficult to stand up outside of the car, we enjoyed the rest, and Rose enjoyed her home made lemonade.
On the way back we stopped in a local craft shop and purchased a pretty photo of a sheep and a rainbow. The shopkeeper assured us the local sheep were worth three Australian sheep. A monument outside the shop memorialised a place where "nothing happened".
In short, it was lovely to see some of rural and regional Ireland that I didn't get the opportunity to do when I was in Ireland last.
Driving into Dublin I struck some luck, when after driving down the River Liffey for a period, I decided to turn over to the other side of the road, only to find I was turning into the street our hotel was in. After dropping Rose and the bags off at the hotel, I went off to drop the rental car back at the depot.
Driving out there, along the same route I caught the bus to where we stayed in 1991 brought back memories of being with my grandmother all those years ago. The city felt smaller, but still effectively the same.
After sorting out our room (we had been given a smoker's room, and it gave Rose a headache), we started to venture into Dublin. The city has no skyscrapers (tallest building is 16 storeys), but a large spike coming out of the middle of the main street, O'Connell St.
I took Rose to the Pro-Cathedral, where all the memories came back strong and I lost it a little bit. It's a small little place where the cities many Catholics can come to worship, as all the other large Cathedrals in Dublin were, and remain, Protestant places of worship.
Our last Wednesday of our trip was spent with the relos, as we got the Magical History Tour of my family. We were shown where all my Great Grandparents are buried (as well as some other ancestors), drove past Bono's house, the house where my Grandfather was born, baptised and went to school, as well as the Monks family home (my Grandfather's mother's family). We stopped off for lunch, and I had some more scones (I love scones), and did some window shopping.
We also visited the youngest of my Lewis generation, who is only a couple of months old. We had some dinner, then went off with the younger relatives into town, where Bobby took us to a rather comical "college night" where the uniform of short dresses, long straight hair and unbelievable tans had Rose, Amy, Amy's partner and myself all highly amused.
We paid for it the next morning, as we started slowly due to the after effects of a late night. When we did go out we eventually got to the Guinness Storehouse, where Guinness is made. An incredible exhibition of exactly how the lovely drop is made awaits, as well as related Guinness paraphernalia such as advertising and packaging. Near the top of the exhibition, which is shaped like a seven storey tall Guinness glass, you can pour your own pint, which I did with glee, before receiving my diploma and finishing my drink. We also visited a bookshop where Rose bought an Irish cookbook, and I tried not to buy about 50 books on Irish history.
The last day included a trip to Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Since being here last, they've really improved the whole set up as to the Book of Kells' display, and it was a nice way to finish.
I know I've taken my time to write these travel notes, but writing on my blog while away was a solitary activity that didn't involve Rose. Some people have enjoyed reading them, some have seemed to pledge never to speak to me again. Anyway, my thoughts and experiences have been exactly that: my thoughts and my experiences.
I would be lying if I said I didn't wish we were still travelling the world. The first few days in Istanbul seem like decades ago now.
Our favourite place was France, and particularly Paris. I know I'll be getting back to Gallipoli, the UK and Ireland, and Rome one day. I've already pledged any future trip to Poland will include everything but Auschwitz. There's a little town in France we desperately want to go back to.
Anyway, that's it. Photos will be up on Facebook soon - I was waiting to finish these. And this blog will go back to what it was before: me pontificating about stuff I think I know stuff about. Thanks for reading.
First up was a dinner with my cousin Antoinette and her family. Her son, Bobby, can only be described as a card. Very energetic, very enthusiastic, emphatically male and 22 years old. Amy, his older sister, is acerbic, but she remembers fondly me teaching her how to slide down the bannister when I visited in 1991. Sophie, the youngest, wasn't around then, and she's still going through high school, which in Ireland has an incomprehensible structure for those from Australia.
I finally had my first proper Irish Guinness, and it was worth the wait. I would return to this elixir when we got back to Dublin.
After leaving Dun Laoghaire on Saturday morning, we drove through Kilkenny on our way to Rossdale in County Wexford. This time we were driving a Mazda, on the correct side of the road.
Kilkenny is officially a city, but it really is a nice, medium sized, town. As we got closer to the coast and the south, the weather got windier and colder. Once we checked into our B&B, we found out very quickly there isn't much to do in Rossdale if you don't play golf. So we played golf.
We actually went to the driving range, where Rose didn't do too well and I got my usual welts on my hands from the grips on the clubs. My slice reared its ugly head on a regular basis. The evening was spent much better, when after dinner, we discovered that the video collection in the sitting room had Aussie favourite Strictly Ballroom, which, for some inexplicable reason, Rose hadn't seen. I saw it in the cinema and loved it, but Rose thought it was silly, despite one of the best chill scenes ever.
The Sunday was spent driving past Cork (which we were warned to stay away from due to crapness) on our way to Killarney in County Kerry. Before embarking on this trip, we sampled every Irish person's favourite Sunday morning excursion: going to mass celebrated in a modern church by an odd looking man with classic Irish hair. His sermon on circumcision was a comedic highlight of the trip.
Killarney has a beautiful national park right next to the city centre, which stretches on to the nearby mountains. After a short wander through this wonderful park, we went and got some dinner. Two plates of magnificent Irish Stew went down a treat.
Then I decided to purchase Rose a tin whistle, which is something I regretted for the rest of our tour around country Ireland. Whenever the radio decided it was too far away from anywhere to get a signal, Rose would decide to attempt to play the whistle, and the resulting noise pollution was almost unbearable. Serves me right for buying it for her.
The next day, between trying to stick gauze in my ears, we drove up to Galway. We stopped in the town for one main purpose - to buy some soda bread and some Kerrygold butter. The best bread and butter combination in the world. I will not argue about this.
Then we drove off to the Connemara mountains, which are some of the most rugged, inhospitable yet incredibly breathtaking mountains anyone could ever see. Mountain sheep wandered on the side of the road looking for feed, and we pulled over to eat our simple yet delicious improvised picnic of bread and butter. While it was difficult to stand up outside of the car, we enjoyed the rest, and Rose enjoyed her home made lemonade.
On the way back we stopped in a local craft shop and purchased a pretty photo of a sheep and a rainbow. The shopkeeper assured us the local sheep were worth three Australian sheep. A monument outside the shop memorialised a place where "nothing happened".
In short, it was lovely to see some of rural and regional Ireland that I didn't get the opportunity to do when I was in Ireland last.
Driving into Dublin I struck some luck, when after driving down the River Liffey for a period, I decided to turn over to the other side of the road, only to find I was turning into the street our hotel was in. After dropping Rose and the bags off at the hotel, I went off to drop the rental car back at the depot.
Driving out there, along the same route I caught the bus to where we stayed in 1991 brought back memories of being with my grandmother all those years ago. The city felt smaller, but still effectively the same.
After sorting out our room (we had been given a smoker's room, and it gave Rose a headache), we started to venture into Dublin. The city has no skyscrapers (tallest building is 16 storeys), but a large spike coming out of the middle of the main street, O'Connell St.
I took Rose to the Pro-Cathedral, where all the memories came back strong and I lost it a little bit. It's a small little place where the cities many Catholics can come to worship, as all the other large Cathedrals in Dublin were, and remain, Protestant places of worship.
Our last Wednesday of our trip was spent with the relos, as we got the Magical History Tour of my family. We were shown where all my Great Grandparents are buried (as well as some other ancestors), drove past Bono's house, the house where my Grandfather was born, baptised and went to school, as well as the Monks family home (my Grandfather's mother's family). We stopped off for lunch, and I had some more scones (I love scones), and did some window shopping.
We also visited the youngest of my Lewis generation, who is only a couple of months old. We had some dinner, then went off with the younger relatives into town, where Bobby took us to a rather comical "college night" where the uniform of short dresses, long straight hair and unbelievable tans had Rose, Amy, Amy's partner and myself all highly amused.
We paid for it the next morning, as we started slowly due to the after effects of a late night. When we did go out we eventually got to the Guinness Storehouse, where Guinness is made. An incredible exhibition of exactly how the lovely drop is made awaits, as well as related Guinness paraphernalia such as advertising and packaging. Near the top of the exhibition, which is shaped like a seven storey tall Guinness glass, you can pour your own pint, which I did with glee, before receiving my diploma and finishing my drink. We also visited a bookshop where Rose bought an Irish cookbook, and I tried not to buy about 50 books on Irish history.
The last day included a trip to Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Since being here last, they've really improved the whole set up as to the Book of Kells' display, and it was a nice way to finish.
I know I've taken my time to write these travel notes, but writing on my blog while away was a solitary activity that didn't involve Rose. Some people have enjoyed reading them, some have seemed to pledge never to speak to me again. Anyway, my thoughts and experiences have been exactly that: my thoughts and my experiences.
I would be lying if I said I didn't wish we were still travelling the world. The first few days in Istanbul seem like decades ago now.
Our favourite place was France, and particularly Paris. I know I'll be getting back to Gallipoli, the UK and Ireland, and Rome one day. I've already pledged any future trip to Poland will include everything but Auschwitz. There's a little town in France we desperately want to go back to.
Anyway, that's it. Photos will be up on Facebook soon - I was waiting to finish these. And this blog will go back to what it was before: me pontificating about stuff I think I know stuff about. Thanks for reading.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Day 48-52 - Scotland
Our bus trip into Edinburgh took us through Lockerbie, where there was still light in the sky at 10:30pm, and the temperature in the surrounding countryside was nearly zero. We arrrived in our hotel not long before midnight.
The next morning did not greet me well, but I managed to rouse myself for a full Scottish Breakfast. In this respect, the Scots are the anti-Italians: black pudding, tattie scones, sausage, bacon, eggs and many other culinary delights. This is the sort of breakfast that makes your heart soar, then go into arrest.
We had one day in Edinburgh, which is probably the most unique place we went other than Venice. The old part of the town, which houses Edinburgh Castle, is on a massive hill. The newer part (only 300 years old!) is on the lower valley in front of the hill, and the main street and shops reside here.
After a walk down that main street, we went back to board the bus to do the bus tour of Edinburgh. The ticket seller engaged us in some small talk, like where we were from and such. Then, with only the slightest hint of cheekiness on his face, he asked me if I wanted to buy bus tickets for myself and my daughter. Smart @rse.
The bus ride around Edinburgh is great, because of it's uniqueness. From the painted on windows to the private park (?), we enjoyed the ride until we went up to the Castle.
Now, Edinburgh was the first place I had been on our little trip which I had previously visited. As a nearly-eleven-year-old, my grandmother and I walked up to the Castle, but I remember being disappointed that most of the Castle was not accessible to visitors.
This time was different, and explored nearly every area of the Castle, which looms large over the skyline of the surrounding area, impenetrable and inaccessible to marauding raiders and armies from the south.
We had some lovely scones, jam and cream in the cafe right at the top of the Castle, and the views all around are some of the prettiest you'll ever see.
Unfortunately, dinner wasn't nearly as good as the mid-afternoon repast. Rose felt like a roast, and we could only find it in one of the pubs near where they used to execute people. I think one of the victims ended up on Rose's plate.
The next day we were off to Glasgow, a short train ride from Edinburgh. After all our travels, this was our last train ride, and therefore the last time we'd have to carry those bags into a train station, onto a train, and then find somewhere to put them. Recommendation - anything more than one large suitcase is too much for train travel.
If Glasgow is more touristy than Liverpool, then it isn't by much. Bigger, with a classy shopping strip, the CBD sort of sprawls to much bigger than Melbourne's, but then the suburbs do not spread for much further than that.
Our visit to Glasgow coincided with a bout of slight illness for Rose, and we spent at least a couple of afternoons resting. But we did manage some high tea at McKenzie's Tea Shoppe, which was more food than two people should eat in one sitting, some more shopping for Sylvanians, and a special visit.
Glasgow is the city in which my mother grew up, and rekindling memories of my own visit there with my grandmother, we went up to Maryhill to see where my family lived before coming to Australia.
There has been some scrubbing-up of Maryhill, but it remains essentially working-class, with the old tenement buildings mostly replaced with orange brick apartment blocks. The shopping strip remains, but the church has lost its primary school. The church was closed when we went past, but a incomprehensible groundskeeper, who may or may not have been named "Wullie", assured us it would be open the next day.
We then walked through Maryhill, along a small creek, to Kelvin Grove Park. It's a lovely place I hadn't been to before, and we walked around and fed some squirrels something they probably shouldn't be eating.
The other side of the park couldn't be more different to Maryhill, as it houses the university and several lovely terrace houses, very much like the ones seen in East Melbourne. Rose wondered aloud why the Lewis family chose the wrong side of the park.
There was plenty of football going on while we were in Glasgow, including an Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers. The combination of the mutual hatred of these two clubs, along with the fact that Rangers had already secured the League title, made the match an entertaining fusion of attacking the goals and attacking each other. The next day Tottenham beat Man City to claim the final Champions League spot.
The next morning we were rudely awoken by a rather loud fire alarm in our otherwise fine hotel. We had to evacuate, with yours truly donning a towel around the waist, and eventually an anti-hypothermia blanket around my shoulders. This is in case any Scottish bloke tells you a story about the time they saw Ricky Ponting standing outside a hotel in Glasgow at 7:20am wearing a towel and tinfoil.
There's not an awful lot to do in Glasgow, but it did give us a chance to hit the gym for the only fitness work of the trip, and also recharge the batteries before a busy last week in Ireland.
The next morning did not greet me well, but I managed to rouse myself for a full Scottish Breakfast. In this respect, the Scots are the anti-Italians: black pudding, tattie scones, sausage, bacon, eggs and many other culinary delights. This is the sort of breakfast that makes your heart soar, then go into arrest.
We had one day in Edinburgh, which is probably the most unique place we went other than Venice. The old part of the town, which houses Edinburgh Castle, is on a massive hill. The newer part (only 300 years old!) is on the lower valley in front of the hill, and the main street and shops reside here.
After a walk down that main street, we went back to board the bus to do the bus tour of Edinburgh. The ticket seller engaged us in some small talk, like where we were from and such. Then, with only the slightest hint of cheekiness on his face, he asked me if I wanted to buy bus tickets for myself and my daughter. Smart @rse.
The bus ride around Edinburgh is great, because of it's uniqueness. From the painted on windows to the private park (?), we enjoyed the ride until we went up to the Castle.
Now, Edinburgh was the first place I had been on our little trip which I had previously visited. As a nearly-eleven-year-old, my grandmother and I walked up to the Castle, but I remember being disappointed that most of the Castle was not accessible to visitors.
This time was different, and explored nearly every area of the Castle, which looms large over the skyline of the surrounding area, impenetrable and inaccessible to marauding raiders and armies from the south.
We had some lovely scones, jam and cream in the cafe right at the top of the Castle, and the views all around are some of the prettiest you'll ever see.
Unfortunately, dinner wasn't nearly as good as the mid-afternoon repast. Rose felt like a roast, and we could only find it in one of the pubs near where they used to execute people. I think one of the victims ended up on Rose's plate.
The next day we were off to Glasgow, a short train ride from Edinburgh. After all our travels, this was our last train ride, and therefore the last time we'd have to carry those bags into a train station, onto a train, and then find somewhere to put them. Recommendation - anything more than one large suitcase is too much for train travel.
If Glasgow is more touristy than Liverpool, then it isn't by much. Bigger, with a classy shopping strip, the CBD sort of sprawls to much bigger than Melbourne's, but then the suburbs do not spread for much further than that.
Our visit to Glasgow coincided with a bout of slight illness for Rose, and we spent at least a couple of afternoons resting. But we did manage some high tea at McKenzie's Tea Shoppe, which was more food than two people should eat in one sitting, some more shopping for Sylvanians, and a special visit.
Glasgow is the city in which my mother grew up, and rekindling memories of my own visit there with my grandmother, we went up to Maryhill to see where my family lived before coming to Australia.
There has been some scrubbing-up of Maryhill, but it remains essentially working-class, with the old tenement buildings mostly replaced with orange brick apartment blocks. The shopping strip remains, but the church has lost its primary school. The church was closed when we went past, but a incomprehensible groundskeeper, who may or may not have been named "Wullie", assured us it would be open the next day.
We then walked through Maryhill, along a small creek, to Kelvin Grove Park. It's a lovely place I hadn't been to before, and we walked around and fed some squirrels something they probably shouldn't be eating.
The other side of the park couldn't be more different to Maryhill, as it houses the university and several lovely terrace houses, very much like the ones seen in East Melbourne. Rose wondered aloud why the Lewis family chose the wrong side of the park.
There was plenty of football going on while we were in Glasgow, including an Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers. The combination of the mutual hatred of these two clubs, along with the fact that Rangers had already secured the League title, made the match an entertaining fusion of attacking the goals and attacking each other. The next day Tottenham beat Man City to claim the final Champions League spot.
The next morning we were rudely awoken by a rather loud fire alarm in our otherwise fine hotel. We had to evacuate, with yours truly donning a towel around the waist, and eventually an anti-hypothermia blanket around my shoulders. This is in case any Scottish bloke tells you a story about the time they saw Ricky Ponting standing outside a hotel in Glasgow at 7:20am wearing a towel and tinfoil.
There's not an awful lot to do in Glasgow, but it did give us a chance to hit the gym for the only fitness work of the trip, and also recharge the batteries before a busy last week in Ireland.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Day 47-49 - Liverpool
Our hotel was down on the docks, where quite a lot of reconstruction and redevelopment has occurred, giving it a similar feel to the Docklands area in Melbourne
It was also almost the first time on the trip we’d endured any sort of inclement weather. It tended to rain in secret in London (at least twice when we had popped back to the hotel to grab something), but we got caught in it a little in Liverpool .
We’d walked into the centre of town and then through Mathew St
For our first dinner in Liverpool we ventured inland, past the centre of town and the train station, to partake in some genuine fish & chip shop food.
The British “Chip Shop” offers a vast array of take-away food items, from Chinese to Pizza to Kebabs to the old fashioned Pie or Fish supper. The Potato Cakes, called scallops, are massive and spurt oil when pierced, like a striking a deposit of clear vegetable oil. The chips are thick and fattening. It was a great meal, although we felt it for the next few hours as our bodies worked hard to digest perhaps the most fattening meal of our lives.
Between extended bouts of watching an Aussie march to a World Snooker Title, we filled our short time in Liverpool going to the Beatles’ Story, which was entertaining but didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. The highlight for me was in the post-Beatles exhibition, when in the area dedicated to George, they played a clip from a mid-1970s broadcast of Rutland Weekend Television. George Harrison is introduced by Eric Idle, and starts to play the memorable opening chords from “My Sweet Lord”, before breaking into a pirate song, much to Idle’s fake protestations. Oh, how we miss having a living Beatle not take himself too seriously.
Attached to the Beatles Story is a “3D Experience”, which really is just an excuse to get people wet. But I was more convinced about 3D television after this experience than I was before it.
We had to wash clothes in Liverpool , in your typical suburban laundromat. After walking past 50 men, aged between 16 and 35, riding down a hill on BMX bikes, we washed our clothes, and got called “pet” and “love” by the woman who operated the coin laundry. Rose found it off-putting; I found it endearing. It was also an excuse to have some more English crisps, which are cooked longer and taste smokier, and therefore better, than they do in Australia
Dinner on Saturday was a little bit more of a struggle, as we couldn’t find anywhere that was satisfactory and didn’t have a minimum 30 minute wait. We finally settled on the restaurant inside our hotel, where I had a curry and lost my black Raider cap.
Our time in Liverpool had been extended by the fact that the match we had planned to attend had been moved from Saturday to Sunday. We carefully planned our Sunday to ensure a quick and speedy getaway from Liverpool to Edinburgh
We caught the bus out to Anfield on Sunday, to experience one of the great sights and sounds in all of sports. Anfield inside is small, with no particularly poor seats. The only thing particularly poor on this day was Liverpool ’s play.
Just before the game, the crowd broke into song, and the two of us, Liverpool fans from half way across the world, joined in with all our might, with our brand new scarves above our heads, adorned with perhaps the greatest motto for any sporting club in the world: YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE. It really is the one area that soccer has it over our indigenous Australian game.
After looking frisky for about 20 minutes, Gerrard tried a pass back to the keeper which was intercepted by Didier Drogba, and it was 1-0 Chelsea
Only when the Chelsea crowd started pointing to the Liverpool supporters, chanting “You are Ancient History”, did the crowd start to get restless, and this elicited a loud response from the home faithful. Overall the Reds looked listless, tired from a physically and emotionally draining loss only three days previous in the semi final of the Europa League.
Apparently the players come out and greet the fans after the last home game of the season, but we couldn’t hang around. Somewhere between here and the train I left behind the match program and book of posters intended for Rose’s younger brother, Deaglan.
When we got to the train station, which was not easy as Anfield is deep in suburban Liverpool and the buses weren’t getting through, we were greeted by some delicious Cornish Pasties (apparently the best Rose has ever eaten), and the news that our long train trip to Edinburgh had just become a longer train and bus trip, thanks to maintenance works on the tracks being done over the Bank Holiday long weekend. After changing at Preston (as planned), Oxenhome & Carlisle, we finally got into Edinburgh
On reflection, after spending time in Liverpool you will know two things: the Beatles come from here, and so does the Liverpool Football Club. Nothing else really matters. I wish the Reds had won, but just being there was great. Actually, being in the city of the Reds, John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Dave Lister, was a blast.
Day 43-46 - London
Anything after Paris and France was going to be a bit of a let down. Unfortunately somewhere had to follow it, and this was London
Our hotel was near Hyde Park , so after dropping off our bags we went for a wander through. While parks can be few and far between in London
We next saw the Wellington Memorial, which contains the London War Memorials of Australia and New Zealand
From there we walked past Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace
What we did see was the Guard Marching Band practising in the open, but with their backs to the street, facing their barracks. Rose was very interested in hearing these guys, while I was more perturbed with the fact they weren’t facing the large crowd.
St James’ Park separates the Palace from the Prime Minister and Westminster
The guard was changing at Westminster
Big Ben didn’t exactly loom over us from that vantage point, primarily because it isn’t that tall. After the Eiffel Tower
The West End is packed with theatres hosting musicals, which pretty much prevented us from going to one, as Rose has no love for musical theatre. There are also many, many shops on Regent and Oxford Streets, and we walked these many times over the next few days as they led from the centre of London
I had waited until London
After weeks of Italian and French breakfasts, I was pleased to see a cooked breakfast and Weetabix. Cumberland
The breakfast got us ready for St John’s Wood, site of two of the most significant places in London
Our tour at Lord’s was led by a Yorkshireman. If you go to Lord’s, insist on a tour guide from Yorkshire – they were put on Earth to talk about cricket. He showed us Real Tennis, which may be the most ridiculous sport still played on the planet today, and as compensation for not being to enter the Long Room, as it was a match day, we were taken onto the ground surface during the lunch break. No truth to the rumour I was asked for my autograph.
I could have stayed all day, listening to our guide talk about all the greats to have played at Lord’s, but this was a honeymoon and not a bachelor trip. We resumed our search for a pair of shoes for Rose, which eventually ended the next day when we finally found a cheapish place that had shoes small enough to fit her.
We did the Tower Bridge , and its incredible moving drawbridge, and the Tower of London Tower of London London , and the English Royal Family, more than anywhere else in London
The highlight of our time in London
It was also one of the few places in London that served a Parma, and considering I medically needed one, this was very good news. Plenty of beer was drunk, but I made sure my original plan to wait until I was Ireland
Thursday morning, after shaking off some sore heads, we headed down to Madame Toussaud’s, where, much to my disappointment, there was no Ricky Ponting wax dummy. I really wanted to have a photo taken of me with myself.
It’s good fun, however, and the dummies are quite hardy and in some cases, eerily lifelike. After a while, if one of the patrons stands still for a little too long, you’ll start to confuse the dummies with the living people. A hideously out of place fright experience comes after the dummies, and then a cab ride through the history of London
If nothing else, London
The food in London England London
Our final act in London was to watch Liverpool get knocked out of the Europa League by Athletico Madrid
If Paris is beautiful, and it is, beyond description, then London Tower of London , the history of the place is beneath the surface, or contained in gaudy shows like the ones at Madame Toussaud’s, or near the Tower Bridge Paris seems comfortable that the history and beauty almost need no promotion (when have you ever seen a tourist ad for France ?), but London
It is also described, by one of its inhabitants, as the least English place in England
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Day 42 - ANZAC Day
Just before we were due to get out of bed for our early morning trip to Villers-Bretonneux, I twisted in bed and my back went into spasm. What seemed like five seconds later, my phone started going off signifying it was time to stop sleeping, not that I had gotten much sleep.
I managed to shave somewhat stiffly when the phone in our room started ringing, but it wasn’t working sufficiently for Rose to hear the person at the other end of the line. After three attempts, they gave up ringing, but shortly after, a knock came on the door to tell us our tour was ready to leave, about 20 minutes before we thought they would come. So much for that shower.
It was bitterly cold as an early morning in Paris met us. It would not be a long drive out to Vil-Bret, but still half asleep, I was trying to use the arch of the seat to stretch my back sufficiently as to stop it hurting so much.
We stopped in a petrol station just after we got off the motorway for a brief toilet stop, before arriving at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It was now extremely cold.
The crowd was large but respectful. A public servant asked for some room, and he escorted the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, through the mass of Aussies so far from home. His staffer’s assertiveness enabled Minister Smith to look more casual, asking a passerby how far she had travelled to be there.
The service was solemn, without being morose. The story of the Aussies in France is one that is often overlooked, as Aussies are beguiled by the myth that is Gallipoli. It is here, in fact, and not on the sand, rocks and shrubs of Turkey, that our great World War I victory was earned.
And so it was, on April 25, 1918, three years to the day since the ANZACs had stormed the beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, that the Australian Imperial Force liberated the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The residents of this town are forever grateful: the streets are named Rue Melbourne and Rue Victoria, and the school, built with contributions from Victorian schoolchildren in 1923, has the mantra looming across the quadrangle, “DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA”.
At this time of year, the town becomes like a mini version of Australia. Graphical representations of kangaroos, koalas and wombats line the streets, either in front of the town hall or stuck to the windows of the houses that line Rue Melbourne. For the last couple of years they’ve even played an Aussie Rules game here.
After the service and visiting the town, we are taken on a broader tour of the area and its memorials: the AIF memorial, the British Arch with its dour looking brown brick, in stark contrast to the Arc D’Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch near Hyde Park in London, the Canadian Memorial with its bronze elk.
What strikes one about the commonality of these memorials are the names of the fallen AND unfound. Literally millions fell on the Western Front in World War I, a foolish folly of a war fought for little good reason on outdated military strategy, which basically wiped out a generation of able bodied, proud and brave men.
Most of these men were either never found or never identified. It wasn’t long before this war that soldiers were not afforded individual memorials, such as a tombstone or individual grave, but this had started to change. The area of France known as the Somme is littered with them.
Every French town, regardless of size, has a memorial to the fallen of World War I, and a list of names; men of the town who never returned.
At the final town, we have lunch then visit the Great War Museum there, which is heavily anti-war. After seeing the volume of names on memorial after memorial, it is difficult to argue with this sentiment.
Rose is war weary, and we steal naps along our trip, and we get back to Paris just as the afternoon is starting to inch towards evening.
It is great to share an experience like that with people like our tour group, a small collection of mostly Queenslanders, and two Mexicans on their honeymoon. Our tour guide was an extremely affable and gregarious man, who finds everything funny and has a warm demeanour that helps us all relax.
The ground of the Somme is hallowed for so many, and for Australians, where so many more died than near the Straits of the Dardenelles, this is also true.
But the sacrifice made here can be felt, and one spends any time in a place like Villers-Bretonneux, it’s hard not to be proud to be an Aussie. No matter how long we’ve been Australian, or what our thoughts on the machinations and politics of conflict, we have a place where, as a nation, we can share a common bond, brought home by the warm welcome and gratitude of a small Frence village called Villers-Bretonneux.
As I signed in the visitor’s book at the visitor’s centre of the USA Memorial at Omaha Beach, where so many French people had signed the book, echoing similar sentiments towards the Americans as the townsfolk of Villers-Bretonneux had done to us Aussies:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left, grow old. Lest We Forget”
I managed to shave somewhat stiffly when the phone in our room started ringing, but it wasn’t working sufficiently for Rose to hear the person at the other end of the line. After three attempts, they gave up ringing, but shortly after, a knock came on the door to tell us our tour was ready to leave, about 20 minutes before we thought they would come. So much for that shower.
It was bitterly cold as an early morning in Paris met us. It would not be a long drive out to Vil-Bret, but still half asleep, I was trying to use the arch of the seat to stretch my back sufficiently as to stop it hurting so much.
We stopped in a petrol station just after we got off the motorway for a brief toilet stop, before arriving at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It was now extremely cold.
The crowd was large but respectful. A public servant asked for some room, and he escorted the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, through the mass of Aussies so far from home. His staffer’s assertiveness enabled Minister Smith to look more casual, asking a passerby how far she had travelled to be there.
The service was solemn, without being morose. The story of the Aussies in France is one that is often overlooked, as Aussies are beguiled by the myth that is Gallipoli. It is here, in fact, and not on the sand, rocks and shrubs of Turkey, that our great World War I victory was earned.
And so it was, on April 25, 1918, three years to the day since the ANZACs had stormed the beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, that the Australian Imperial Force liberated the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The residents of this town are forever grateful: the streets are named Rue Melbourne and Rue Victoria, and the school, built with contributions from Victorian schoolchildren in 1923, has the mantra looming across the quadrangle, “DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA”.
At this time of year, the town becomes like a mini version of Australia. Graphical representations of kangaroos, koalas and wombats line the streets, either in front of the town hall or stuck to the windows of the houses that line Rue Melbourne. For the last couple of years they’ve even played an Aussie Rules game here.
After the service and visiting the town, we are taken on a broader tour of the area and its memorials: the AIF memorial, the British Arch with its dour looking brown brick, in stark contrast to the Arc D’Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch near Hyde Park in London, the Canadian Memorial with its bronze elk.
What strikes one about the commonality of these memorials are the names of the fallen AND unfound. Literally millions fell on the Western Front in World War I, a foolish folly of a war fought for little good reason on outdated military strategy, which basically wiped out a generation of able bodied, proud and brave men.
Most of these men were either never found or never identified. It wasn’t long before this war that soldiers were not afforded individual memorials, such as a tombstone or individual grave, but this had started to change. The area of France known as the Somme is littered with them.
Every French town, regardless of size, has a memorial to the fallen of World War I, and a list of names; men of the town who never returned.
At the final town, we have lunch then visit the Great War Museum there, which is heavily anti-war. After seeing the volume of names on memorial after memorial, it is difficult to argue with this sentiment.
Rose is war weary, and we steal naps along our trip, and we get back to Paris just as the afternoon is starting to inch towards evening.
It is great to share an experience like that with people like our tour group, a small collection of mostly Queenslanders, and two Mexicans on their honeymoon. Our tour guide was an extremely affable and gregarious man, who finds everything funny and has a warm demeanour that helps us all relax.
The ground of the Somme is hallowed for so many, and for Australians, where so many more died than near the Straits of the Dardenelles, this is also true.
But the sacrifice made here can be felt, and one spends any time in a place like Villers-Bretonneux, it’s hard not to be proud to be an Aussie. No matter how long we’ve been Australian, or what our thoughts on the machinations and politics of conflict, we have a place where, as a nation, we can share a common bond, brought home by the warm welcome and gratitude of a small Frence village called Villers-Bretonneux.
As I signed in the visitor’s book at the visitor’s centre of the USA Memorial at Omaha Beach, where so many French people had signed the book, echoing similar sentiments towards the Americans as the townsfolk of Villers-Bretonneux had done to us Aussies:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left, grow old. Lest We Forget”
Day 38-41 - Paris
Our arrival in Paris was eventful, to say the least. Not quite as significant as Charles De Galle’s or as graceful as Rudolph Nureyev.
We drove into Paris while continuing to avoid paying to use a road. Eventually we were forced onto the motorway, but at this stage we didn’t have to pay for it. The road threw us off at a place called St Cloud, leaving us a short but tricky trip to the centre of Paris, and our hotel on Rue Tronchet.
This car ride quickly became a disaster. Paris celebrates France’s love of the one way street, meaning the route Rose had carefully planned from the map in her Lonely Planet guide went out the window (metaphorically, we didn’t throw the book out the window) pretty early.
Then my initiative failed me when I decided to take the car through the roundabout around the Arc D’Triomphe. Quite simply, of Paris’ metropolitan population of roughly 11 million people, 5 million of them, at any one time, are in a car going round the Arc D’Triomphe.
Shortly after that my courteousness and gentlemanly manner while driving obviously irritated the priest behind me, who decided to honk me. A first, to be sure.
When we finally got to the hotel I couldn’t really park, so hurried the luggage out of the car and left Rose with it at the hotel while I went to find my drop off point.
To cut a long and boring story short, two car parks, 30 minutes and one more honking from a priest (he had a nun as a passenger this time), I finally managed to drop the car off. I was drained and ready for a rest.
The cafes that fill Paris are very similar in menu and decor, and it is difficult to tell them apart. We had dinner in four of them, but not on the first night when we found a cosy little restaurant.
Next morning we went off, armed with our four day museum passes and two day tourist bus passes. This is really the way to visit Paris, although it took a while to get the audio guide’s voice from the bus out of my head.
The first museum, at my insistence, was the Musee Louvre. I love all the religious paintings as they tell a story I’m somewhat familiar with. It’s a huge place that it is impossible to get around without better ankles and great motivation, but I saw the Mona Lisa (probably the creepiest painting in the world), Madonna on the Rocks, St John the Baptist, and many other paintings, along with sculptures, mosaics and frescos.
After that we got back on the bus to go to Notre Dame Cathedral, described as the world’s worst tourist trap. We firstly looked under the quadrangle in front of the Cathedral, then went in and looked around the magnificent church.
Then we decided to go up to the spire and lookout area. This is when Rose discovered my situational dislike of heights.
The ledge was narrow, about 12 inches wide in parts when walking around, and although one is always quite safe behind wire, looking down was not pleasant. I politely declined an opportunity to go further up. This would not be the first time on the trip.
After finally descending all the way to the bottom and fighting off quadriceps cramp, we partook two of the footpath crepes Paris is famous for. Rose, faithful to her sweet tooth to the last, had her crepe with Nutella and Banana, while I predictably had cheese, ham and mushroom. Both were delicious.
For our final excursion for the day, we headed to the Saint Chappelle, which has what our possibly the most beautiful stained glass windows in the world. The church is being renewed and renovated at the moment, so some of the glass was unavailable due to repair, but the view was breathtaking none the less.
After that we were back on our tourist bus, which one can hop on and hop off at their leisure. It was a long trip, going around the Eiffel Tower a couple of times, before finally getting us back close to home.
Day two’s main museum attraction would be the Musee D’Orsay, which holds the most impressive collection of impressionist paintings in the world. Continuing on from our visit to Monet’s Garden in Giverny, this was a particular treat for Rose, who loves this kind of art. I was honest in my appraisal, liking some stuff and not others, leading Rose to inform me she thought I had an “eclectic taste” in art. This may be one of the nicest things Rose has ever said to me. No kidding.
The D’Orsay, like the Louvre, is very big, housed in an old train station that had fallen into disuse. We probably spent three hours there before moving on to the Arc D’Triomphe.
The Arc is another large monument, under which lies the tomb of the Unknown French Soldier, who died in the Great War, as it is known in France (although in French). While I did know you could ascend to the top of the Arc, what I didn’t know was the top section underneath the roof contained an exhibition, one half dedicated to France’s war successes (which contrary to popular opinion are many), and the other half dedicated to the Arc itself, and other like Arcs of Triumph all over the world. Anne will be pleased to know the only one in Australia is located in her home town of Ballarat.
Standing on top of the Arc is less daunting than standing on the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral, but we had taken our time getting there, and Rose had enjoyed an ice cream break at Haagen Daas, so instead of trying to cram something else in on Day 2, we enjoyed instead a leisurely walk back to our hotel, via a cafe, before heading off later in the evening to watch Liverpool in the Europa League. Unfortunately, the English Pub we were in insisted on showing a frightfully dull Fulham game before Liverpool’s.
Day 3 started with a trip through the Place D’Concord, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, among others, were permanently separated from their heads, to the Musee D’Armee, which exhibits the military history of France, a great exhibition containing all manner of medieval armour and weapons, and also Napoleon’s tomb, which despite him being cremated, is a massive construction.
Nearby is the Musee Rodin, which is dedicated to Rodin himself, the great sculptor who made “The Thinker”. He was obviously a busy man; the private house is full of his stuff and he was quite prolific.
After a stop at a cafe for some food, we decided on a romantic night in the hotel.
We had to move to a different hotel on the Saturday before ANZAC Day, as our tour for the day required it. As a big, stupid man, I thought we could make it by availing ourselves of the Paris public transport system, specifically the underground.
Too many stairs, having to change trains, and a longing walk from the final train station finished Rose off, and she firstly suffered a nose bleed, and then duly decided to sleep for a few hours, leaving me with the laundry, which, in fact, I was happy to do.
Rose felt a little better after a sleep, and we went out for some food. Rose was captivated by a girl happily tucking into a dish of Steak Tartare, which is quite simply, raw beef. On this occasion, the beef was minced and served with an egg’s yolk.
We had an early start on ANZAC DAY, beginning at 2:30am, so we tucked in early, ready for our big day on April 25.
We drove into Paris while continuing to avoid paying to use a road. Eventually we were forced onto the motorway, but at this stage we didn’t have to pay for it. The road threw us off at a place called St Cloud, leaving us a short but tricky trip to the centre of Paris, and our hotel on Rue Tronchet.
This car ride quickly became a disaster. Paris celebrates France’s love of the one way street, meaning the route Rose had carefully planned from the map in her Lonely Planet guide went out the window (metaphorically, we didn’t throw the book out the window) pretty early.
Then my initiative failed me when I decided to take the car through the roundabout around the Arc D’Triomphe. Quite simply, of Paris’ metropolitan population of roughly 11 million people, 5 million of them, at any one time, are in a car going round the Arc D’Triomphe.
Shortly after that my courteousness and gentlemanly manner while driving obviously irritated the priest behind me, who decided to honk me. A first, to be sure.
When we finally got to the hotel I couldn’t really park, so hurried the luggage out of the car and left Rose with it at the hotel while I went to find my drop off point.
To cut a long and boring story short, two car parks, 30 minutes and one more honking from a priest (he had a nun as a passenger this time), I finally managed to drop the car off. I was drained and ready for a rest.
The cafes that fill Paris are very similar in menu and decor, and it is difficult to tell them apart. We had dinner in four of them, but not on the first night when we found a cosy little restaurant.
Next morning we went off, armed with our four day museum passes and two day tourist bus passes. This is really the way to visit Paris, although it took a while to get the audio guide’s voice from the bus out of my head.
The first museum, at my insistence, was the Musee Louvre. I love all the religious paintings as they tell a story I’m somewhat familiar with. It’s a huge place that it is impossible to get around without better ankles and great motivation, but I saw the Mona Lisa (probably the creepiest painting in the world), Madonna on the Rocks, St John the Baptist, and many other paintings, along with sculptures, mosaics and frescos.
After that we got back on the bus to go to Notre Dame Cathedral, described as the world’s worst tourist trap. We firstly looked under the quadrangle in front of the Cathedral, then went in and looked around the magnificent church.
Then we decided to go up to the spire and lookout area. This is when Rose discovered my situational dislike of heights.
The ledge was narrow, about 12 inches wide in parts when walking around, and although one is always quite safe behind wire, looking down was not pleasant. I politely declined an opportunity to go further up. This would not be the first time on the trip.
After finally descending all the way to the bottom and fighting off quadriceps cramp, we partook two of the footpath crepes Paris is famous for. Rose, faithful to her sweet tooth to the last, had her crepe with Nutella and Banana, while I predictably had cheese, ham and mushroom. Both were delicious.
For our final excursion for the day, we headed to the Saint Chappelle, which has what our possibly the most beautiful stained glass windows in the world. The church is being renewed and renovated at the moment, so some of the glass was unavailable due to repair, but the view was breathtaking none the less.
After that we were back on our tourist bus, which one can hop on and hop off at their leisure. It was a long trip, going around the Eiffel Tower a couple of times, before finally getting us back close to home.
Day two’s main museum attraction would be the Musee D’Orsay, which holds the most impressive collection of impressionist paintings in the world. Continuing on from our visit to Monet’s Garden in Giverny, this was a particular treat for Rose, who loves this kind of art. I was honest in my appraisal, liking some stuff and not others, leading Rose to inform me she thought I had an “eclectic taste” in art. This may be one of the nicest things Rose has ever said to me. No kidding.
The D’Orsay, like the Louvre, is very big, housed in an old train station that had fallen into disuse. We probably spent three hours there before moving on to the Arc D’Triomphe.
The Arc is another large monument, under which lies the tomb of the Unknown French Soldier, who died in the Great War, as it is known in France (although in French). While I did know you could ascend to the top of the Arc, what I didn’t know was the top section underneath the roof contained an exhibition, one half dedicated to France’s war successes (which contrary to popular opinion are many), and the other half dedicated to the Arc itself, and other like Arcs of Triumph all over the world. Anne will be pleased to know the only one in Australia is located in her home town of Ballarat.
Standing on top of the Arc is less daunting than standing on the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral, but we had taken our time getting there, and Rose had enjoyed an ice cream break at Haagen Daas, so instead of trying to cram something else in on Day 2, we enjoyed instead a leisurely walk back to our hotel, via a cafe, before heading off later in the evening to watch Liverpool in the Europa League. Unfortunately, the English Pub we were in insisted on showing a frightfully dull Fulham game before Liverpool’s.
Day 3 started with a trip through the Place D’Concord, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, among others, were permanently separated from their heads, to the Musee D’Armee, which exhibits the military history of France, a great exhibition containing all manner of medieval armour and weapons, and also Napoleon’s tomb, which despite him being cremated, is a massive construction.
Nearby is the Musee Rodin, which is dedicated to Rodin himself, the great sculptor who made “The Thinker”. He was obviously a busy man; the private house is full of his stuff and he was quite prolific.
After a stop at a cafe for some food, we decided on a romantic night in the hotel.
We had to move to a different hotel on the Saturday before ANZAC Day, as our tour for the day required it. As a big, stupid man, I thought we could make it by availing ourselves of the Paris public transport system, specifically the underground.
Too many stairs, having to change trains, and a longing walk from the final train station finished Rose off, and she firstly suffered a nose bleed, and then duly decided to sleep for a few hours, leaving me with the laundry, which, in fact, I was happy to do.
Rose felt a little better after a sleep, and we went out for some food. Rose was captivated by a girl happily tucking into a dish of Steak Tartare, which is quite simply, raw beef. On this occasion, the beef was minced and served with an egg’s yolk.
We had an early start on ANZAC DAY, beginning at 2:30am, so we tucked in early, ready for our big day on April 25.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Day 27-37 - Driving Through France
We spent ten days driving through France. Here are some observations from this trip:
Driving
In the cities, a propensity for one way streets can make things difficult to get around. I struggle to see the point of so many one way streets, including my favourite in Nice, when after taking nearly two hours to get my car, the street I was driving down turned from a two way street into a one way street without announcement.
The French motorways come in to forms: toll roads and free motorways when there is no free alternative to driving on the motorway. Our first day we spent 16 Euro getting from Nice to Aix-de-Provence , which is about the equivalent of driving to Ballarat from Melbourne. After this, we managed to avoid tolls for the rest of the trip.
Driving on the roads between towns can be interesting. Trucks have their own, much lower, speed limits in France and cannot leave the right hand lane. On a motorway, this usually leaves trucks and other slow coaches in the right hand lane, people roughly doing the speed limit (which is 130kmh on motorways) in the middle lane, and guys in very fast cars going very fast in the lane closest to the centre median.
The smaller roads are generally 90kmh, and while some try to go faster, this is not always possible if only one lane goes each way. Sometimes you can get stuck behind a truck doing 70kmh for quite some time before a passing lane gives one the opportunity to pass it.
The French are also strongly committed to the roundabout. While they can be exasperating, they often give the driver the opportunity to either reverse a wrong turn, or check which direction they should be going in.
Parking
Associated with driving is parking. Quite simply, large French cities don’t want you to park in their city. We went around Avignon a few times, Pau for almost an hour and drove through Bordeaux (where we had planned to stay) because we couldn’t find a spot to stop and look for accommodation. In the end, we amended our plans to avoid big cities like Nantes and Amiens and stay in smaller places instead.
Food
The best discovery of the driving excursion was a little town called Castelnaudary, which we had planned to stay in on the first Sunday evening, driving from Avignon. Castelnaudary is the self-appointed capital of a dish called Cassoulet, which is a peasant dish from South East France.
They cook white beans in pork and sausage fat , then cook the sausage and pork and duck (France’s favourite poultry, much more prevalent on menus than chicken) in the beans, then put it in the oven covered with breadcrumbs and shaved pork crackling. It is quite simply one of the better dishes I have ever had.
Overall the food in France is good, but menus don’t vary an awful lot. They like lamb, beef (cooked or uncooked), pork and duck. And contrary to some reports, the food is not too expensive.
Anyway, let’s look at each of the places we stayed:
Nice
A lovely resort town on the Mediterranean. As we went to Nice from Ventimiglia, we stopped in Monte Carlo, and suddenly the train was like a sardine tin. Nearly everyone who got on in Monaco got off in Nice. We didn’t see an awful lot of Nice, except for when I was trying to find a way out of Nice, but it seemed a very pleasant place.
Funny story – the rental car company needed a credit card. I went back to the hotel to get my one. Then they needed 200 Euro credit on it for the guarantee. I had like $110 in my non-holiday bank account. Fortunately my dear Mother had just transferred some money into my bank account, otherwise we may have been stuck in Nice for another three days without booked accommodation. All was well that ended well.
Avignon
Hope of the papacy in the 14th Century, we toured around the old Papal Palace at dusk. It has an old defensive wall around the old city and a charming main street with a carousel. It was here that I discovered the world’s worst beer – Leffe.
Funny story – on the Sunday morning we did our washing in the local coin laundry. In case a man of Algerian heritage smoking and drinking. He was friendly, and tried to continue a conversation with us for about an hour, although neither of us could speak his language, nor he ours. The only he said in French we could recognise was “Sarkozy – Merd!” As our clothes stubbornly refused to sufficiently dry, his seedy mates joined him. When our clothes finally dried, we left in about 0.0008 seconds.
Castelnaudary
Home of the Cassoulet. The town has a small lake, and the carnival was in town. We shared a goat’s cheese salad that was magnificent before I had Cassoulet and Rose had some chicken which was equally good. If we ever get a holiday house in the South of France, it’ll probably be very close to Castelnaudary.
Funny story – early next morning a local market decided to spring up, around my parked car. We barely made it out.
Lourdes
We visited Lourdes on our way to Pau. There were three churches on the spot of the apparitions, one on top of the other, and we managed to get some water in a small vial. There was a long line for people to bathe in it, and many people afflicted with some sort of disability moving around.
Funny story – all the crappers (not urinals) in the Men’s toilets at Lourdes are crouchers.
Pau
I know I’ve been criticised for being overly critical of various places, but I say this with no hesitation – Pau is a dump. Don’t go there. The only good thing about Pau is I watched the replay of St Kilda beating Collingwood there.
Bordeaux Libourne
We did stop in Bordeaux, and have some coffee. I had a B&B in mind, but when we finally found it, no one opened the door when Rose knocked. After touring around for about an hour, we finally decided to split this joint and keep driving, until we arrived at a smaller town called Libourne. We stayed at a lovely old hotel run but two older women who dressed comfortably (wink), and it was a wonderful experience. The room, which was really quite cheap, reminded us both of the rooms at the Windsor in Melbourne.
Funny story – we had dinner at an American themed diner, where we ordered massive burgers and milkshakes with more cream than shake. I think Rose is still eating her burger.
St Leonard de Noblat
A small town just through Limoges, we arrived and stayed at the only hotel in town, which was fortunately quite nice. We walked through the old cemetery; the carnival followed us here as well. I spent 15 Euro winning Rose some cups. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant, where we had Duck’s leg in pastry, which was delicious and perfectly cooked.
Funny story – On the way to Limgoes, we stopped in Angeloume and bought some Brie. When we got to the hotel a few hours later, it smelled funny, like it had gone bad, so we threw it out. Later in the evening for dessert we shared some cheeses. The Brie smelled exactly the same. Turns out Rose threw out 4 Euros (a lot) worth of perfectly good cheese. Brie smells that way in France.
Poitiers
A bigger town with a large cathedral and a tiny Statue of Liberty, more one way streets you can poke a stick at, and a hotel in the middle of town with a car park. We sent postcards from there, and reacquainted ourselves with Italian food for the first time since leaving Italy. A very nice place indeed.
Funny story – we decided to go bowling, and we sped off in the rough direction of the bowling alley. On what I assumed was a 90kmh road, I got pulled over by the cops. I was doing 94kmh in a 70kmh zone.
The fine was 90 Euro exactly. The policeman asked from where I was, and I informed him. He then asked for my driver’s licence, and I produced the International one I had purchased for the very purpose of driving through France (and later Ireland) before we left. The policeman told me it was no good here. At this moment I started wondering what the inside of a French lock-up cell was like.
He asked me if I had a driver’s licence in Australia, and I did. It was also in the car, in my wallet, which was in my big bag. I went to open it, but remembered that the key was back in the hotel room.
I only had 50 Euro notes on me as well, so out of the blue, he took pity on me and gave me a warning. I drove off to look for the bowling alley and settle my nerves.
We couldn’t find it, but eventually did. Looking for a car parking space, I took a wrong turn and was suddenly back on the road, about to go past the cops again. Rose thinks we should go bowling more often.
Rennes
Rennes is another bigger city, and parking was again difficult. We had a picnic style lunch planned for along the way, but the road between Poitiers and Rennes was almost all motorways, so we had to have lunch in a nice park in a truck stop.
We stayed in a nice, new hotel that punched above its weight, and went to the movies in the evening, seeing the only movie we could in English, a movie called “New York, I Love You”.
Funny story – They didn’t sell any snacks at the Cinema. No popcorn, no drinks, nothing.
Bayeux
Bayeux is in Normandy, and seems to be the centre of tourism related to D Day. It is also the home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which at 70 metres long, tells the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and accession to the throne of the King of England.
After that, we drove down to Omaha Beach and the US War Cemetery there. The visitor’s centre is one of the better done war museums, and the cemetery itself is carefully planned and laid out. A cool wind came in from the coast, across the beaches stormed in June 1944.
Funny story – there is an Omaha Beach Golf Course, because if there wasn’t, the Nazis would win.
Dieppe
Kind of like a northern Nice, this is the resort town on the north coast of France, with its beach devoid of sand but overflowing with small stones and pebbles, and its stalls and games. Parking was again a struggle but inventive, as people just took up any space they could. We played mini-golf which Rose duly won (about time, she had lost bowling) and had dinner at the Casino.
Funny story – the Casino has two roulette tables, one blackjack table and one poker table. And some pokies.
Giverny/St Marcel
Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden, and a gallery of impressionist paintings from his genre. It took some finding, as we drove to the wrong town to get there and had to drive back. The garden is maintained meticulously, even down to a guy dredging the lack with a net to get the algae out. We bought a Monet print in Giverny, but had very little money after that and a big lunch, so we went down market in a nearby industrial town, St Marcel.
Funny story – Monet’s Garden is basically owned by a large rooster with a sore throat.
The day after Giverney we were due in Paris, so that is where this road trip ends.
Driving
In the cities, a propensity for one way streets can make things difficult to get around. I struggle to see the point of so many one way streets, including my favourite in Nice, when after taking nearly two hours to get my car, the street I was driving down turned from a two way street into a one way street without announcement.
The French motorways come in to forms: toll roads and free motorways when there is no free alternative to driving on the motorway. Our first day we spent 16 Euro getting from Nice to Aix-de-Provence , which is about the equivalent of driving to Ballarat from Melbourne. After this, we managed to avoid tolls for the rest of the trip.
Driving on the roads between towns can be interesting. Trucks have their own, much lower, speed limits in France and cannot leave the right hand lane. On a motorway, this usually leaves trucks and other slow coaches in the right hand lane, people roughly doing the speed limit (which is 130kmh on motorways) in the middle lane, and guys in very fast cars going very fast in the lane closest to the centre median.
The smaller roads are generally 90kmh, and while some try to go faster, this is not always possible if only one lane goes each way. Sometimes you can get stuck behind a truck doing 70kmh for quite some time before a passing lane gives one the opportunity to pass it.
The French are also strongly committed to the roundabout. While they can be exasperating, they often give the driver the opportunity to either reverse a wrong turn, or check which direction they should be going in.
Parking
Associated with driving is parking. Quite simply, large French cities don’t want you to park in their city. We went around Avignon a few times, Pau for almost an hour and drove through Bordeaux (where we had planned to stay) because we couldn’t find a spot to stop and look for accommodation. In the end, we amended our plans to avoid big cities like Nantes and Amiens and stay in smaller places instead.
Food
The best discovery of the driving excursion was a little town called Castelnaudary, which we had planned to stay in on the first Sunday evening, driving from Avignon. Castelnaudary is the self-appointed capital of a dish called Cassoulet, which is a peasant dish from South East France.
They cook white beans in pork and sausage fat , then cook the sausage and pork and duck (France’s favourite poultry, much more prevalent on menus than chicken) in the beans, then put it in the oven covered with breadcrumbs and shaved pork crackling. It is quite simply one of the better dishes I have ever had.
Overall the food in France is good, but menus don’t vary an awful lot. They like lamb, beef (cooked or uncooked), pork and duck. And contrary to some reports, the food is not too expensive.
Anyway, let’s look at each of the places we stayed:
Nice
A lovely resort town on the Mediterranean. As we went to Nice from Ventimiglia, we stopped in Monte Carlo, and suddenly the train was like a sardine tin. Nearly everyone who got on in Monaco got off in Nice. We didn’t see an awful lot of Nice, except for when I was trying to find a way out of Nice, but it seemed a very pleasant place.
Funny story – the rental car company needed a credit card. I went back to the hotel to get my one. Then they needed 200 Euro credit on it for the guarantee. I had like $110 in my non-holiday bank account. Fortunately my dear Mother had just transferred some money into my bank account, otherwise we may have been stuck in Nice for another three days without booked accommodation. All was well that ended well.
Avignon
Hope of the papacy in the 14th Century, we toured around the old Papal Palace at dusk. It has an old defensive wall around the old city and a charming main street with a carousel. It was here that I discovered the world’s worst beer – Leffe.
Funny story – on the Sunday morning we did our washing in the local coin laundry. In case a man of Algerian heritage smoking and drinking. He was friendly, and tried to continue a conversation with us for about an hour, although neither of us could speak his language, nor he ours. The only he said in French we could recognise was “Sarkozy – Merd!” As our clothes stubbornly refused to sufficiently dry, his seedy mates joined him. When our clothes finally dried, we left in about 0.0008 seconds.
Castelnaudary
Home of the Cassoulet. The town has a small lake, and the carnival was in town. We shared a goat’s cheese salad that was magnificent before I had Cassoulet and Rose had some chicken which was equally good. If we ever get a holiday house in the South of France, it’ll probably be very close to Castelnaudary.
Funny story – early next morning a local market decided to spring up, around my parked car. We barely made it out.
Lourdes
We visited Lourdes on our way to Pau. There were three churches on the spot of the apparitions, one on top of the other, and we managed to get some water in a small vial. There was a long line for people to bathe in it, and many people afflicted with some sort of disability moving around.
Funny story – all the crappers (not urinals) in the Men’s toilets at Lourdes are crouchers.
Pau
I know I’ve been criticised for being overly critical of various places, but I say this with no hesitation – Pau is a dump. Don’t go there. The only good thing about Pau is I watched the replay of St Kilda beating Collingwood there.
Bordeaux Libourne
We did stop in Bordeaux, and have some coffee. I had a B&B in mind, but when we finally found it, no one opened the door when Rose knocked. After touring around for about an hour, we finally decided to split this joint and keep driving, until we arrived at a smaller town called Libourne. We stayed at a lovely old hotel run but two older women who dressed comfortably (wink), and it was a wonderful experience. The room, which was really quite cheap, reminded us both of the rooms at the Windsor in Melbourne.
Funny story – we had dinner at an American themed diner, where we ordered massive burgers and milkshakes with more cream than shake. I think Rose is still eating her burger.
St Leonard de Noblat
A small town just through Limoges, we arrived and stayed at the only hotel in town, which was fortunately quite nice. We walked through the old cemetery; the carnival followed us here as well. I spent 15 Euro winning Rose some cups. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant, where we had Duck’s leg in pastry, which was delicious and perfectly cooked.
Funny story – On the way to Limgoes, we stopped in Angeloume and bought some Brie. When we got to the hotel a few hours later, it smelled funny, like it had gone bad, so we threw it out. Later in the evening for dessert we shared some cheeses. The Brie smelled exactly the same. Turns out Rose threw out 4 Euros (a lot) worth of perfectly good cheese. Brie smells that way in France.
Poitiers
A bigger town with a large cathedral and a tiny Statue of Liberty, more one way streets you can poke a stick at, and a hotel in the middle of town with a car park. We sent postcards from there, and reacquainted ourselves with Italian food for the first time since leaving Italy. A very nice place indeed.
Funny story – we decided to go bowling, and we sped off in the rough direction of the bowling alley. On what I assumed was a 90kmh road, I got pulled over by the cops. I was doing 94kmh in a 70kmh zone.
The fine was 90 Euro exactly. The policeman asked from where I was, and I informed him. He then asked for my driver’s licence, and I produced the International one I had purchased for the very purpose of driving through France (and later Ireland) before we left. The policeman told me it was no good here. At this moment I started wondering what the inside of a French lock-up cell was like.
He asked me if I had a driver’s licence in Australia, and I did. It was also in the car, in my wallet, which was in my big bag. I went to open it, but remembered that the key was back in the hotel room.
I only had 50 Euro notes on me as well, so out of the blue, he took pity on me and gave me a warning. I drove off to look for the bowling alley and settle my nerves.
We couldn’t find it, but eventually did. Looking for a car parking space, I took a wrong turn and was suddenly back on the road, about to go past the cops again. Rose thinks we should go bowling more often.
Rennes
Rennes is another bigger city, and parking was again difficult. We had a picnic style lunch planned for along the way, but the road between Poitiers and Rennes was almost all motorways, so we had to have lunch in a nice park in a truck stop.
We stayed in a nice, new hotel that punched above its weight, and went to the movies in the evening, seeing the only movie we could in English, a movie called “New York, I Love You”.
Funny story – They didn’t sell any snacks at the Cinema. No popcorn, no drinks, nothing.
Bayeux
Bayeux is in Normandy, and seems to be the centre of tourism related to D Day. It is also the home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which at 70 metres long, tells the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and accession to the throne of the King of England.
After that, we drove down to Omaha Beach and the US War Cemetery there. The visitor’s centre is one of the better done war museums, and the cemetery itself is carefully planned and laid out. A cool wind came in from the coast, across the beaches stormed in June 1944.
Funny story – there is an Omaha Beach Golf Course, because if there wasn’t, the Nazis would win.
Dieppe
Kind of like a northern Nice, this is the resort town on the north coast of France, with its beach devoid of sand but overflowing with small stones and pebbles, and its stalls and games. Parking was again a struggle but inventive, as people just took up any space they could. We played mini-golf which Rose duly won (about time, she had lost bowling) and had dinner at the Casino.
Funny story – the Casino has two roulette tables, one blackjack table and one poker table. And some pokies.
Giverny/St Marcel
Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden, and a gallery of impressionist paintings from his genre. It took some finding, as we drove to the wrong town to get there and had to drive back. The garden is maintained meticulously, even down to a guy dredging the lack with a net to get the algae out. We bought a Monet print in Giverny, but had very little money after that and a big lunch, so we went down market in a nearby industrial town, St Marcel.
Funny story – Monet’s Garden is basically owned by a large rooster with a sore throat.
The day after Giverney we were due in Paris, so that is where this road trip ends.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Day 24-26 - Milan
There’s not really much to say about Milan, as I managed to get sick there. We were only there for a few days, sort of as a stopping point between Rome and France. The original plan was to commence our drive from here, but the car rental companies don’t like you picking up a car in one country and leaving it in another, and they also don’t miss an opportunity to charge you for something.
When we arrived, we felt like an early dinner, but found this was impossible. Restaurants in Milan open for dinner no earlier than about 7:00pm, and sometimes as late as 8:30pm. We walked what seemed like half way to Paris looking for somewhere that was open before heading back to the hotel, only to leave later.
Rose decided to do some shopping in Milan, but her comically small feet betrayed her again. Rose really does struggle to find shoes that fit her, and this was no exception. She had to leave a very nice pair of red shoes at the shoe shop because they were too big.
There’s not too much to do in Milan unless you are there to shop, and you have sufficient cash reserves. The Last Supper by Da Vinci is here, but I only learned this half way through our time in Milan, and by the time we turned up we found that the rest of the day was booked out as they only let 25 people in every 15 minutes. Ah, well.
I managed to purchase a Torres top for our Liverpool excursion. This seemed to be a bad omen as Torres himself immediately went in for season ending knee surgery.
The cathedral in Milan has a marble exterior which makes it look very different to most Italian cathedrals, and the city has the highest density of Dolce & Gabbana’s stores anywhere in the world.
Other than that, we left Milan after a couple of days where I attempted to get plenty of rest. The highlight was probably seeing Torres score a double as Liverpool beat Benfica in the Europa League. It was Torres’ last appearance for the season for the Reds.
The train trip to Ventimiglia was picturesque, and we got off there to change to a French train to cross the border and get to Nice.
When we arrived, we felt like an early dinner, but found this was impossible. Restaurants in Milan open for dinner no earlier than about 7:00pm, and sometimes as late as 8:30pm. We walked what seemed like half way to Paris looking for somewhere that was open before heading back to the hotel, only to leave later.
Rose decided to do some shopping in Milan, but her comically small feet betrayed her again. Rose really does struggle to find shoes that fit her, and this was no exception. She had to leave a very nice pair of red shoes at the shoe shop because they were too big.
There’s not too much to do in Milan unless you are there to shop, and you have sufficient cash reserves. The Last Supper by Da Vinci is here, but I only learned this half way through our time in Milan, and by the time we turned up we found that the rest of the day was booked out as they only let 25 people in every 15 minutes. Ah, well.
I managed to purchase a Torres top for our Liverpool excursion. This seemed to be a bad omen as Torres himself immediately went in for season ending knee surgery.
The cathedral in Milan has a marble exterior which makes it look very different to most Italian cathedrals, and the city has the highest density of Dolce & Gabbana’s stores anywhere in the world.
Other than that, we left Milan after a couple of days where I attempted to get plenty of rest. The highlight was probably seeing Torres score a double as Liverpool beat Benfica in the Europa League. It was Torres’ last appearance for the season for the Reds.
The train trip to Ventimiglia was picturesque, and we got off there to change to a French train to cross the border and get to Nice.
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