After all the craziness of Adelaide, I needed some time to relax, so I booked myself in for three nights in Sydney.
It was basically a few days of reliving old memories. I actually checked into the same hotel I was in for the first week so many years ago, back when all this blogging nonsense was still getting started on the hallowed halls of MySpace. I called in to my old church and spent some time in my old work haunt in Chatswood (Appen appears to have long since relocated). I even walked across the same Sydney Harbour Bridge that I used to. I caught the ferry over to Manly for no reason at all, as it was cold and dark and in the middle of winter. The city lights on the way back are still awesome though.
Just for sentiment's sake, I stopped in at the shopping centre to visit the Oxfam shop which was the scene of so much made-up heartache. Not only was 'she' not there, but even the Oxfam shop itself was gone. I was heart broken, and a little disturbed. Oxfam Girl may have had some fictitiousness related issues, but I was sure the shop was real. Maybe the whole torrid affair was even more mental than I realised...
Given the amount of friends I still have in Sydney, and the relatively short time I had to spend there, I seemed to spend an entirely disproportionate amount of time with Kirribilli Kim. I choose to blame a corporate aversion to dish washing for this, but it did make for a great few days.
It all started innocently enough (well…) with a murder mystery party held in Kim’s flat. I was going to skip the explanation for this and just link you to Kim’s post about it, but that turns out to be just a bunch of photos and the rather spurious suggestion that I’m not as cranky as I seem (I flatly deny this). I’m still definitely too lazy to go over the details, but basically Suzie did it and we had taco salad for dinner.
I mention the “salad” for two reasons: firstly because none of us had ever heard of taco salad. I’m not sure if it’s a peculiarly American dish or whether I’ve just spent too much time avoiding anything connected with salads to pick up on it. Seriously, you could call a dish the “three kinds of meat and a couple of cheeses salad” and I would probably still skip over it on the menu. But it was pretty good.
Anyway…
The other reason to mention the meal is to foreshadow the frankly incredible amount of dishes generated by the preparation and consumption of said salad. As the other guests began to filter away from the party, I made the uncharacteristically chivalrous decision to hang around and help clean up. Seriously, the pile of plates was bigger than Kim.
In the subsequent hours, some of the following things happened. Some of them didn’t.
We discussed the relative virtues of various chocolatier franchises.
We invented a new species of duck.
I learned to play euchre.
Kim learned to play the cello.
We washed the dishes.
We discussed pressing social issues from various religious standpoints.
We covered everything in Kim’s housemate’s room in aluminium foil.
We made out for about an hour and a half.
I fell down three flights of stairs.
We slunk away as the sun rose over Neutral Bay, thinking “That was a crazy night. I’m going to regret this”.
Kim walked into a glass door.
What a night! Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
25 July 2012
19 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 5 - The Other Side of the Coin
Grief is weird.
Two days after the craziest most joyful celebration we’ve had for many years, the family turned around to back it up with the funeral of my father’s mother.
I’ve never really been able to connect much with funerals. It’s probably because the funerals for my three grandparents (my mother’s father died before I was born) have involved anything but tragedy; they’ve all been celebrations of long and fruitful lives.
It was different last year when I attended funerals for Krysti and Rita: They were larger than life people cut down way too soon by illness. For those women, a corporate expression of mourning was not only necessary, but deeply moving.
I really didn’t feel like that at Nanna’s recent funeral. Is that bad? She made it to 87, and in the end her passing was an end to an unwinnable struggle with illness and physical deterioration with age. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her loving family.
So somehow the very large and public funeral seemed strange – even unnecessary. I mean, I get that there were heaps and heaps of people who wanted to pay their respects, and I get that funerals are just something we do to mark a person’s death in our culture, but through the whole thing I felt completely disconnected – even when I went forward with the rest of the family to carry the coffin out to the hearse. Like I was watching a ceremony on TV from a culture I don’t understand.
I had thought that last sentence was a really original perpsective, until realised I wrote the same thing on my post about my other grandmother's funeral. Well I may be insensitive, but at least I'm consistent.
I don’t really do external displays of emotion, particularly sadness. My Australian maleness, coupled with the particular stoicism that seems to define the men in my family, means that when I’m surrounded by emotional people, even people I love, my default strategy is to keep quiet and keep my head down, or find somewhere else to be. An alternative strategy I’ve been working on is to climb up on a stage and pretend to be someone else for a while, but that’s another story (and potentially a rather expensive therapy session).
The point is between a thousand (okay… four) aunties plus everyone my elderly grandmother had ever met coming through to pay their respects and no Happy Yess to run away to I really never felt like I had any business sitting in the church that afternoon. My dad gave a great eulogy and the music was nice, but I didn’t feel like it fulfilled any function in terms of ‘saying goodbye’, or ‘getting closure’ or whatever.
And so ended one of the weirder weeks I've ever had in Adelaide. After so many days of heightened, strained and at times forced emotions, I was extremely grateful to escape from the whole thing later that night to the relative tranquility of a Boeing 737 and a good book.
Make of that what you will. And so say we all.
Garry with 2Rs
Two days after the craziest most joyful celebration we’ve had for many years, the family turned around to back it up with the funeral of my father’s mother.
I’ve never really been able to connect much with funerals. It’s probably because the funerals for my three grandparents (my mother’s father died before I was born) have involved anything but tragedy; they’ve all been celebrations of long and fruitful lives.
It was different last year when I attended funerals for Krysti and Rita: They were larger than life people cut down way too soon by illness. For those women, a corporate expression of mourning was not only necessary, but deeply moving.
I really didn’t feel like that at Nanna’s recent funeral. Is that bad? She made it to 87, and in the end her passing was an end to an unwinnable struggle with illness and physical deterioration with age. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her loving family.
So somehow the very large and public funeral seemed strange – even unnecessary. I mean, I get that there were heaps and heaps of people who wanted to pay their respects, and I get that funerals are just something we do to mark a person’s death in our culture, but through the whole thing I felt completely disconnected – even when I went forward with the rest of the family to carry the coffin out to the hearse. Like I was watching a ceremony on TV from a culture I don’t understand.
I had thought that last sentence was a really original perpsective, until realised I wrote the same thing on my post about my other grandmother's funeral. Well I may be insensitive, but at least I'm consistent.
I don’t really do external displays of emotion, particularly sadness. My Australian maleness, coupled with the particular stoicism that seems to define the men in my family, means that when I’m surrounded by emotional people, even people I love, my default strategy is to keep quiet and keep my head down, or find somewhere else to be. An alternative strategy I’ve been working on is to climb up on a stage and pretend to be someone else for a while, but that’s another story (and potentially a rather expensive therapy session).
The point is between a thousand (okay… four) aunties plus everyone my elderly grandmother had ever met coming through to pay their respects and no Happy Yess to run away to I really never felt like I had any business sitting in the church that afternoon. My dad gave a great eulogy and the music was nice, but I didn’t feel like it fulfilled any function in terms of ‘saying goodbye’, or ‘getting closure’ or whatever.
And so ended one of the weirder weeks I've ever had in Adelaide. After so many days of heightened, strained and at times forced emotions, I was extremely grateful to escape from the whole thing later that night to the relative tranquility of a Boeing 737 and a good book.
Make of that what you will. And so say we all.
Garry with 2Rs
18 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 4 - The Big Day
So what else can I tell you about the wedding itself?
Well… both my sister and her newly acquired husband are fairly unconventional people. I mean, not in the sense of having extra limbs or anything, but in the sense of having a healthy taste for personal expressions that go slightly against the norm. Just little things, like having the church brightly festooned with balloons instead of flowers, or producing an order of service that had more in common with a Broadway show programme than a church bulletin, or carrying bouquets decorated with motifs ranging from horseshoes to daleks.
One convention that my sister was absolutely determined to eschew was the cliché of arriving late to the wedding. She was absolutely insistent that the wedding would start on time, and her well documented ability to get not only her own, but everyone else’s acts together when it was needed left us in no doubt that she could do it.
The groom and his associates were all in kilts. I really don’t know what would possess a Scotsman, let alone four Australians, to wear a kilt. But they did. Apparently my sister went to a great deal of effort to clandestinely arrange for the groom’s kilt to be made of the tartan appropriate to his clan, which had previously been declared unavailable. That was pretty cool. But they were still four guys in skirts.
When the bridesmaids arrived, twenty minutes late (didn’t matter too much, I just kept playing increasingly obscure variations on the Theme from Voyager), they were all dressed differently, with a dress style and colour that suited them, but each with the same kind of shawly scarfey thing made of … lamb’s wool? I don’t know. It was fluffy looking.
The bride wore a white dress.
There were the usual prayers and a sermon from the relatively young minister, who was new at doing weddings and appeared to be several times more nervous than the bride and groom. There was a reading from John's gospel, and then a bit from the writings of C.S. Lewis, all about what real love looks like. That was actually pretty awesome.
I don’t know much about Battlestar Galactica. That means I can’t really tell you why ending the congregational affirmation of the vows with a resounding “and so say we all” was awesome. But I’m assured it was, and I’m prepared to take the bridal party’s word for it just this once.
The primary objective accomplished, we adjourned to my aunt and uncle’s house, where we posed for a quadrillion photographs with every combination of family, extended family, distant relations and… who the hell is that guy? Fortunately being only in the family and not the wedding party itself, we were soon released to return home for a breather while the official party took off to take a quadrillion more photos at various spots around Adelaide which, while boring and snooty, is quite pretty in places.
The reception was at a … actually I don’t know what it was. It’s called Utopia. I think it’s a winery, or some sort of society gathering point in the foothills. It was a drinks and finger food affair, with a few very low key speeches, before the groom had some nice mulled wine and a pretty girl gave him a hat made out of a tree.
And before we knew it, they were off into the night, in a vintage car bound for a flight to New Zealand, leaving at least one party guest thinking to himself
“Holy crap my sister is married.”
Well… both my sister and her newly acquired husband are fairly unconventional people. I mean, not in the sense of having extra limbs or anything, but in the sense of having a healthy taste for personal expressions that go slightly against the norm. Just little things, like having the church brightly festooned with balloons instead of flowers, or producing an order of service that had more in common with a Broadway show programme than a church bulletin, or carrying bouquets decorated with motifs ranging from horseshoes to daleks.
One convention that my sister was absolutely determined to eschew was the cliché of arriving late to the wedding. She was absolutely insistent that the wedding would start on time, and her well documented ability to get not only her own, but everyone else’s acts together when it was needed left us in no doubt that she could do it.
The groom and his associates were all in kilts. I really don’t know what would possess a Scotsman, let alone four Australians, to wear a kilt. But they did. Apparently my sister went to a great deal of effort to clandestinely arrange for the groom’s kilt to be made of the tartan appropriate to his clan, which had previously been declared unavailable. That was pretty cool. But they were still four guys in skirts.
When the bridesmaids arrived, twenty minutes late (didn’t matter too much, I just kept playing increasingly obscure variations on the Theme from Voyager), they were all dressed differently, with a dress style and colour that suited them, but each with the same kind of shawly scarfey thing made of … lamb’s wool? I don’t know. It was fluffy looking.
The bride wore a white dress.
There were the usual prayers and a sermon from the relatively young minister, who was new at doing weddings and appeared to be several times more nervous than the bride and groom. There was a reading from John's gospel, and then a bit from the writings of C.S. Lewis, all about what real love looks like. That was actually pretty awesome.
I don’t know much about Battlestar Galactica. That means I can’t really tell you why ending the congregational affirmation of the vows with a resounding “and so say we all” was awesome. But I’m assured it was, and I’m prepared to take the bridal party’s word for it just this once.
The primary objective accomplished, we adjourned to my aunt and uncle’s house, where we posed for a quadrillion photographs with every combination of family, extended family, distant relations and… who the hell is that guy? Fortunately being only in the family and not the wedding party itself, we were soon released to return home for a breather while the official party took off to take a quadrillion more photos at various spots around Adelaide which, while boring and snooty, is quite pretty in places.
The reception was at a … actually I don’t know what it was. It’s called Utopia. I think it’s a winery, or some sort of society gathering point in the foothills. It was a drinks and finger food affair, with a few very low key speeches, before the groom had some nice mulled wine and a pretty girl gave him a hat made out of a tree.
And before we knew it, they were off into the night, in a vintage car bound for a flight to New Zealand, leaving at least one party guest thinking to himself
“Holy crap my sister is married.”
17 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 3 - Songs of Love
Take my heart, hand in hand
To where the sea and sunshine fall
Dance our feet here in the sand
Songs of love don’t need a sound
That’s an extract from Compliments of Gus’ song “Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound,” from the “If This is the End” album. Steve and Rachel had asked if I could learn to play it and if Steve’s sister would sing it for the signing of the register. It’s a flowing piano ballad, which means that the recording of it gives Jared Haschek a chance to show off what a colossal freak on the piano he is. In a good way.
It also poses a set of interesting questions.
1) Exactly how was I supposed to do that?
2) How many metaphors can you mix up before your lyrics become completely obfuscated
3) If songs of love don’t need a sound, how come we needed a band for the wedding?
4) Why don’t people use the word obfuscated more often? It’s cool.
Yes… so this post is supposed to be about music for the big day. It hasn’t started well.
Music practice was on the Thursday night before the big day. Unfortunately the drummer couldn’t make it. Also none of us remembered to bring any copies of the music we were supposed to be practising. Church musicians for the win. It was all a little ad hoc, but that’s kind of how we roll.
The exception was the sister of the groom, who was absolutely insistent on delivering a polished, well-rehearsed performance. That’s a good thing, right? Anyway, that particular performance must have been the most prepared I’ve been for a song in a church service in about five years. I mean, we must have played it upwards of six times before doing it for real. It was pretty good.
Anyway, there’s another post coming about the wedding day in general, but as a teaser, here’s a copy of the musical programme for the day, as it happened. I’ll let you make of it what you will.
Incidental music before the service: Piano solo rendering of variations on the Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (surprisingly catchy)
Bridal procession: (recording) Abigail’s Song (from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special)
First hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness
Second hymn: Spirit Flowing Through Creation (I didn’t know this one before the wedding, but it was nice)
Signing of the Register: Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound, by Compliments of Gus (We nailed it)
Recessional: Pipe Organ rendition of Song of Freedom from the finale of Doctor Who series 4 (or series 31, depending on your point of view)
Bridal Waltz: Theme from Jaws (not really)
Video message from the reception: reasonably intoxicated chorus of Songs of Love Don't need a Sound, before the camera died on us. We're awesome.
Song that was stuck in my head on the ride home: With You, Friends, by Skrillex (I don’t know why).
To where the sea and sunshine fall
Dance our feet here in the sand
Songs of love don’t need a sound
That’s an extract from Compliments of Gus’ song “Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound,” from the “If This is the End” album. Steve and Rachel had asked if I could learn to play it and if Steve’s sister would sing it for the signing of the register. It’s a flowing piano ballad, which means that the recording of it gives Jared Haschek a chance to show off what a colossal freak on the piano he is. In a good way.
It also poses a set of interesting questions.
1) Exactly how was I supposed to do that?
2) How many metaphors can you mix up before your lyrics become completely obfuscated
3) If songs of love don’t need a sound, how come we needed a band for the wedding?
4) Why don’t people use the word obfuscated more often? It’s cool.
Yes… so this post is supposed to be about music for the big day. It hasn’t started well.
Music practice was on the Thursday night before the big day. Unfortunately the drummer couldn’t make it. Also none of us remembered to bring any copies of the music we were supposed to be practising. Church musicians for the win. It was all a little ad hoc, but that’s kind of how we roll.
The exception was the sister of the groom, who was absolutely insistent on delivering a polished, well-rehearsed performance. That’s a good thing, right? Anyway, that particular performance must have been the most prepared I’ve been for a song in a church service in about five years. I mean, we must have played it upwards of six times before doing it for real. It was pretty good.
Anyway, there’s another post coming about the wedding day in general, but as a teaser, here’s a copy of the musical programme for the day, as it happened. I’ll let you make of it what you will.
Incidental music before the service: Piano solo rendering of variations on the Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (surprisingly catchy)
Bridal procession: (recording) Abigail’s Song (from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special)
First hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness
Second hymn: Spirit Flowing Through Creation (I didn’t know this one before the wedding, but it was nice)
Signing of the Register: Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound, by Compliments of Gus (We nailed it)
Recessional: Pipe Organ rendition of Song of Freedom from the finale of Doctor Who series 4 (or series 31, depending on your point of view)
Bridal Waltz: Theme from Jaws (not really)
Video message from the reception: reasonably intoxicated chorus of Songs of Love Don't need a Sound, before the camera died on us. We're awesome.
Song that was stuck in my head on the ride home: With You, Friends, by Skrillex (I don’t know why).
16 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 2 - Suit Up
Sometime back in May I decided that I would buy myself a nice new suit for the occasion of my sister’s wedding. Having learned from previous attempts to buy stuff that I like, I decided I’d better get out there and start looking around in case it took a few weeks to order in.
There’s basically only one place in Darwin that does professional suit tailoring. I went to see them and let them know what style of suit I was after (have you got anything to match this hat?) and get the whole process moving. It was quite an educational experience. Here are just a few things I’ve learned.
1) Professionally produced suits for Darwin take at least ten weeks to get here. So ordering a suit in May for a wedding in July isn’t enough notice apparently.
2) My taste in suit jackets is not currently fashionable. I can live with that, except that suit jackets with more than two buttons on the front are not just out of style, they are out of existence. It is not possible to purchase a suit jacket off the rack with three buttons. NOT POSSIBLE! Who makes these decisions?
3) All modern jackets are designed with what is known as a “slim fit” Apparently this doesn’t mean that to wear them you have to be slim. It means that they are designed to give the illusion of being broad of shoulder and narrow of waist. Unfortunately I’ve got that the wrong way around, which means most jackets in menswear shops look a little ridiculous on me.
I gave up on local menswear shops in fairly short order, and decided to go with the time-pressure option of picking one up in Adelaide in the week before the wedding. So Monday morning, fresh off a day of buckful frivolity and grandmotherful bereavement I headed for the city centre to meet my sister and complete a tour of Adelaide’s top menswear outlets.
“Three buttons? Uh… no.”
I honestly wasn’t expecting to make it through the day without having to suppress the urge to punch someone. Suit shopping seems a fairly pretentious thing to do in the first place (I’m not sure why. It’s a perfectly legitimate thing to want to buy when you think about it), and that pretension was only amplified by the fact that were doing it in Adelaide, whose commercial operators have never really struck me as down to earth or helpful.
I was pleasantly surprised. The guy in the first shop we visited actually spoke a variety of English fairly close to mine, and seemed more interested asking what I wanted than in telling me what I should want. Also his suits actually did seem to be made for real people as opposed to unrealistically framed shop mannequins. I ended up buying the outfit he put together for me, but not before shopping around a little, and it was here that the fun really started.
In Gauler Place, which runs off the side of Rundle Mall, is a smallish menswear shop called Uzumco, or something like that. If you're ever in Adelaide and looking to buy a new suit, go there and get fitted - not because the suits are necessarily better than anywhere else (I went with a different outlet in the end, although this guy's suits were pretty good) but because the guy is just so damned cool.
The proprietor was a shortish, slightly built Italian gentleman, who had quite obviously devoted his life to the science of finding nice suits. Where other salesman had determined my size by using a tape measure, this guy - I kid you not - just stood four paces away from me, framed me with his hands like a photographer, then ran off into his storeroom. He came back with a shirt and a pair of trousers that fit me perfectly. I was impressed.
Choosing a jacket was even more fun, he waved his hands around again, then sent his assistant out for a very specific jacket. they bought it to me with great ceremony, but I only got it on as far as my elbows before he yelled "Stop! Take it off, I don't like it. No!" He whisked it away and came back with another one.
I was honestly torn between his outfit and the first one, but in the end the Italian suit, while very comfortable, was just a little more "Sicily in the 1930s" than I usually go for.
All I needed now was a tie. I'd been told Mum would be wearing a blue dress, and Dad would be wearing a tie to match it, so I went out to find me a plain blue tie. I figured it was a safe bet, particularly as I went shopping in the biggest shopping centre in Adelaide.
After about an hour and a half of searching, I found the only plain blue tie in Marion shopping centre. It was in Roger David of all places. Both Myer and David Jones failed to supply just simple plain coloured ties. Apparently stripes are very fashionable at the moment. Again, I'm not sure who is responsible for making these decisions, but just in case (as I suspect) it's some housewife in Canada making all the decision based on Google searches, I'm just going to put this sentence in so it shows up on the next search she runs:
Three buttoned suit jackets with plain coloured ties are so hot right now.
Of course it didn't really matter. By the time I sat down at the grand piano wearing a suit complete with black felt fedora, no-one was looking at the tie anyway. But that's another story.
There’s basically only one place in Darwin that does professional suit tailoring. I went to see them and let them know what style of suit I was after (have you got anything to match this hat?) and get the whole process moving. It was quite an educational experience. Here are just a few things I’ve learned.
1) Professionally produced suits for Darwin take at least ten weeks to get here. So ordering a suit in May for a wedding in July isn’t enough notice apparently.
2) My taste in suit jackets is not currently fashionable. I can live with that, except that suit jackets with more than two buttons on the front are not just out of style, they are out of existence. It is not possible to purchase a suit jacket off the rack with three buttons. NOT POSSIBLE! Who makes these decisions?
3) All modern jackets are designed with what is known as a “slim fit” Apparently this doesn’t mean that to wear them you have to be slim. It means that they are designed to give the illusion of being broad of shoulder and narrow of waist. Unfortunately I’ve got that the wrong way around, which means most jackets in menswear shops look a little ridiculous on me.
I gave up on local menswear shops in fairly short order, and decided to go with the time-pressure option of picking one up in Adelaide in the week before the wedding. So Monday morning, fresh off a day of buckful frivolity and grandmotherful bereavement I headed for the city centre to meet my sister and complete a tour of Adelaide’s top menswear outlets.
“Three buttons? Uh… no.”
I honestly wasn’t expecting to make it through the day without having to suppress the urge to punch someone. Suit shopping seems a fairly pretentious thing to do in the first place (I’m not sure why. It’s a perfectly legitimate thing to want to buy when you think about it), and that pretension was only amplified by the fact that were doing it in Adelaide, whose commercial operators have never really struck me as down to earth or helpful.
I was pleasantly surprised. The guy in the first shop we visited actually spoke a variety of English fairly close to mine, and seemed more interested asking what I wanted than in telling me what I should want. Also his suits actually did seem to be made for real people as opposed to unrealistically framed shop mannequins. I ended up buying the outfit he put together for me, but not before shopping around a little, and it was here that the fun really started.
In Gauler Place, which runs off the side of Rundle Mall, is a smallish menswear shop called Uzumco, or something like that. If you're ever in Adelaide and looking to buy a new suit, go there and get fitted - not because the suits are necessarily better than anywhere else (I went with a different outlet in the end, although this guy's suits were pretty good) but because the guy is just so damned cool.
The proprietor was a shortish, slightly built Italian gentleman, who had quite obviously devoted his life to the science of finding nice suits. Where other salesman had determined my size by using a tape measure, this guy - I kid you not - just stood four paces away from me, framed me with his hands like a photographer, then ran off into his storeroom. He came back with a shirt and a pair of trousers that fit me perfectly. I was impressed.
Choosing a jacket was even more fun, he waved his hands around again, then sent his assistant out for a very specific jacket. they bought it to me with great ceremony, but I only got it on as far as my elbows before he yelled "Stop! Take it off, I don't like it. No!" He whisked it away and came back with another one.
I was honestly torn between his outfit and the first one, but in the end the Italian suit, while very comfortable, was just a little more "Sicily in the 1930s" than I usually go for.
All I needed now was a tie. I'd been told Mum would be wearing a blue dress, and Dad would be wearing a tie to match it, so I went out to find me a plain blue tie. I figured it was a safe bet, particularly as I went shopping in the biggest shopping centre in Adelaide.
After about an hour and a half of searching, I found the only plain blue tie in Marion shopping centre. It was in Roger David of all places. Both Myer and David Jones failed to supply just simple plain coloured ties. Apparently stripes are very fashionable at the moment. Again, I'm not sure who is responsible for making these decisions, but just in case (as I suspect) it's some housewife in Canada making all the decision based on Google searches, I'm just going to put this sentence in so it shows up on the next search she runs:
Three buttoned suit jackets with plain coloured ties are so hot right now.
Of course it didn't really matter. By the time I sat down at the grand piano wearing a suit complete with black felt fedora, no-one was looking at the tie anyway. But that's another story.
15 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 1 - What The Buck?
I’ve always found buck’s parties to be really weird. I understand the concept of spending a day/night having fun doing things you might no longer have the opportunity/time for once you’re married, but I’ve also wondered: if the party is all about doing things that celebrate being single, how come the only time us single guys do most of them is at buck’s parties?
Christian buck’s parties are even weirder. The absence of the clichéd excessive drunkenness and female nudity which denote the prototypical secular buck’s night, coupled with the fact that in any gathering of modern Christian men, eighty six and a half per cent* are married anyway, means you’re left with a group of guys out for the day doing … what exactly?
In fact there’s only one thing weirder than a Christian buck’s day: A Christian buck’s day for the man who’s marrying your sister.
From the outset, I made it as clear as I diplomatically could that I did not expect an invitation and was not really keen on going at all. I don’t even know my sister’s new husband that well, let alone his crew of close mates, most of whom I’d never met.
I’ll admit, I actually had a pretty good time. It’s a cultural given that what happens on a buck’s day stays on a buck’s day, so I’ll limit myself to saying that My sister’s fiancé and his mates were cool enough to make traipsing around the Adelaide Hills in the cold and wet enjoyable despite the Adelaideness of it all.
We returned a tired, celebrated and thoroughly narrated groom-to-be to his parents’ house later that evening, where I was met with a phone call to tell me my grandmother had passed away, and the family was gathering at the hospital.We did so quietly and solmenly, and with a great sense of relief for the end of suffering.
It was such a strange day; madcap antics with a bunch of guys I hardly knew, followed by what should have been a truamtic night but which was completely, almost eerily, peaceful.
All in all it was an eventful first day, but the week was only just getting started.
*Yep. I made that one up
Christian buck’s parties are even weirder. The absence of the clichéd excessive drunkenness and female nudity which denote the prototypical secular buck’s night, coupled with the fact that in any gathering of modern Christian men, eighty six and a half per cent* are married anyway, means you’re left with a group of guys out for the day doing … what exactly?
In fact there’s only one thing weirder than a Christian buck’s day: A Christian buck’s day for the man who’s marrying your sister.
From the outset, I made it as clear as I diplomatically could that I did not expect an invitation and was not really keen on going at all. I don’t even know my sister’s new husband that well, let alone his crew of close mates, most of whom I’d never met.
I’ll admit, I actually had a pretty good time. It’s a cultural given that what happens on a buck’s day stays on a buck’s day, so I’ll limit myself to saying that My sister’s fiancé and his mates were cool enough to make traipsing around the Adelaide Hills in the cold and wet enjoyable despite the Adelaideness of it all.
We returned a tired, celebrated and thoroughly narrated groom-to-be to his parents’ house later that evening, where I was met with a phone call to tell me my grandmother had passed away, and the family was gathering at the hospital.We did so quietly and solmenly, and with a great sense of relief for the end of suffering.
It was such a strange day; madcap antics with a bunch of guys I hardly knew, followed by what should have been a truamtic night but which was completely, almost eerily, peaceful.
All in all it was an eventful first day, but the week was only just getting started.
*Yep. I made that one up
13 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Prelude
Long-time readers will by now be well acquainted with the rather strained relationship I have with the city of Adelaide. New readers can catch up here. And non-readers can go and… yeah I really don’t know where I was going with that.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
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