A Truly Engaging Evening

I’ve had a bit of an exciting week. I’ve just gotten engaged to my beautiful fiancée, which means that my fiancée and I are now creatively finding as many ways as possible to work the word fiancée into every sentence we utter (fiancée). I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in the whole proposal process, and I was a little alarmed to see not just my friends, but a few complete strangers filming the event on smart phones. It’s not that I’m shy by any means, it just meant we were immediately in a race against time to get to all the family and close friends of me and my fiancée by phone before YouTube beat us to it. It sounds silly, but when we went FB official with it after a couple of days, we had over a hundred likes in less than two hours, which was really affirming and really quite intimidating at the same time. I wish I could send the screenshot to my high school self, and say “don’t worry about it mate, this is how popular you’re going to be one day.

Return of the Fedora

The hat is back on the track, picking up slack, taking no flack, kicking it back and going on the attack. It’s jet black and made of … felt.

And thus ends my brief foray into the swirling morass of the Australian hip-hop subculture.

Yes, almost two years after the cataclysmic tragedy that was the abandonment of my previous hat, and after several utterly frustrating attempts to replace it, my completely awesome family have come to the rescue, pitching in to order me a new one for my birthday that meets my ridiculously strict requirements for acceptable black felt fedoras.

So I’ve now taken possession of a black felt Akubra international style fedora, custom ordered at the Strand hat shop in Sydney and lovingly hand delivered during my parents’ recent trip up for the DMUC jubilee. Yes, I realise that was twelve months ago now, but it's taken me some time to sort out pics to put on my profile and to think up the rhymes for the intro.

I now feel re-licensed to continue being flagrant, which is just as well, because things around here are starting get just a little bit weird. I've had a number of people (I am not discussing what that number might be) ask me about the now infamous (well... not so famous. maybe just inf) Resolution Seven.

Actually I hadn't planned it that way, but "Resolution Seven" sounds awesome. Like it's a bill that enacts the legalisation of unlicensed hoverboard riding, or legsilates for the decriminalisation of deadly force against English backpackers, or something like that.

Okay, even if its application is somewhat more domestic, it's still a cool name. Furthermore, I've realised that I've been approaching Seven from entirely the wrong perspective. I've been wandering around the place feeling like it's somehow my responsibility to find "the right girl" and then impress her.

Bollocks to that. I have a black felt fedora. And I am continuously finding more and more public ways to be blatantly awesome. The right one can come and find me. I'll be the one up the front signing autographs, whether they have been asked for or not.

In anticipation of your comments, please note the following:

Jess: It's probably worth not thinking about this one too hard either
K.Kim: The typographical errors are there deliberately, just to frustrate you.
Harold: It's an interesting point, but your perspective on plasticine algorithms leaves little to the imagination, if you know what I mean.
Rachel: Relax, I'm fine. Same goes for you, Mum.

I don't really care what you make of this one.




Garry with 2 Rs

Damn. I forgot “wiggedy-whack”. That would have been an awesome rhyme.

The New Game

Way back some time in the last century when I was in high school I was part of an unusually close group of friends. There were five of us in total. It’s not really clear what bought us all together as we didn’t have anything observable in common except for irreverent senses of humour, an incination towards the theatrical and a tendency to call “bullshit” when we saw it (usually emanating from one of the other four) which tended to alienate us a little from other students, not to mention the teachers.

Chris, Phil, Jess, Garry (well…) and Dan.

Actually, the other thing we had in common was that all of us had parents associated with the staff or governance of the school we all went to. It was an extremely poorly kept secret that said parents had a number of informal betting pools running.

1) Which of the five would be the first to get married?

2) Which of the four guys would end up marrying Jess?

3) Which of the five of us would turn out to be gay?

Our school being of the fundamentalist Christian persuasion, obviously there was no actual gambling involved, especially on that last one.

Shortest odds for first married were almost certainly on Daniel, who was the oldest of the gang and had been voted the southern hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor (his parents had objected to the use of the term ‘sexiest man alive’) three years straight, albeit by a panel that consisted of the other four of us. Consensus on which one of us was going to marry Jess depended on whose mother you were talking to at the time.

In the end Chris was the first to go, in what was described in hushed tones as something of an upset. However, he had to go all the way to New Zealand to do it, which was agreed by most to be cheating. Jess went next and threw a spanner in everyone’s mother’s works by not marrying any of us (actually, Jess’ mother was probably quite relieved). At least she had the common decency to marry a local. Just a year later it was Phil’s turn.

And then there were two.

Ever since Phil’s wedding back in 2006, Dan and I have been engaged (huh?) in a gentlemen’s wager. I say gentlemen’s wager, but I really just mean friendly competition, as there were no stakes riding on it, and I’m not a gentleman. Basically, we decided to see which of us could go the longest without getting married.

If that seems like a reasonably pointless (not to mention backwards) competition, that’s just because… it is. But when you think about it, it makes much more sense than trying to see who can get married first. For one, it provides an extra layer of disincentive to do something stupid too soon if you get romantically entangled (“Maybe we should take this to the next level… nah, I wouldn’t want to lose a bet to Dan”) and also it has the added benefit that if you lose, at least you’re getting married, so that’s some sort of consolation. As endurance sports go, doing it this way has also made it much more competitive, as remaining single has historically been something both Dan and I have been pretty good at. It’s been six long years, and neither combatant has shown any sign of flagging.

That is, until now.

Yes that’s right, I have an announcement to make, the repercussions of which could shake the very firmament, but probably won’t. It has come out of nowhere and taken more than a few people by surprise, especially me, but… I, Garry with 2 Rs, am now officially…

The winner!

Indeed. Dan announced his engagement last weekend, and I am now The Last Man Standing. It has been suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t be as happy about this as I so obviously am. However, these suggestions have, without exception, come from people who gave up and got married years ago and are just jealous. As Josh Lyman so eloquently put it:

“I drink from the keg of glory. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land”

Or as Horatio Nelson said:

“First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.”

And as Sachin Tendulkar put it:

“You can’t hold a ceramic tiger with a pair of size nine mittens made out of apricot jam”.

…

The point is that, the wager now being won, I can stop playing. All this time people have assumed I am single because I’m a cynical cranky debt-ridden misogynistic bastard (or possibly that I turned out to be the gay one. I don’t know what the odds were on that and I don’t think I want to), when all the time I was just trying to win a bet. And now I have.

So it’s time for a new game. I was going to call this new game “Travel Monopoly Junior” but apparently that’s already taken, so I’ll leave the title open as a work in progress. Everyone else around me having been disqualified on grounds of matrimony, the new game is a variation of solitaire and begins when the person left of the dealer rolls a seven. Winner is the first person not to die alone. Spades are trumps, it’s tippy-go and only one person gets to be the top hat.

Make of that… nope. Just forget it.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Unexpected Development

Strangely enough, I’ve received a few comments from friends in the three dimensional world regarding my list of goals for 2011. Most have suggested that there’s a certain goal on the list that doesn’t quite seem realistic, or at the very least seems to be well outside my ability to influence it. Given my lifestyle, attitude and general health lately, I would ordinarily tend to agree. However just recently there have been some very promising signs suggesting it may be time to take the red pen to my to-do list a little earlier than we had anticipated. And obviously as a blogger and compulsive attention junkie, I feel compelled to tell you all about it. Aren’t you lucky?

I’ve joined a social Wednesday night mixed volley ball team. I’ve been getting to know the other girls and guys on the team a bit over the past few weeks and we’re getting along really well as a social unit, if you know what I mean. As a volley ball team, on the other hand, we are utterly abysmal, and haven’t quite managed to win a game yet. But we’re having fun.

By pure coincidence at the same as this has been happening, the inter-congregational social soccer game has started up again on Sunday afternoons at my old school. I love getting out and hanging out with folk from other churches, as well as having a run around with some social soccer. You never know who you’re going to bump into there either.

On top of all that, now I’m playing Sepak Takraw two or three nights a week as well. I’m still working on a write-up on that for those of you wondering what’s going on. Stay tuned. Couple that with an intention to get back into cricket once a few other variables in my life get sorted out and we’re looking at the makings of a veritable, if not capable, sports nut. I'm sitting in my room typing this up and enjoying the first night in almost a week that I haven't been out doing something active. It's crazy, I tell you.

And if I can keep this sort of regime up, I should get myself down to 90kg in no time. I never thought it was possible until it started to happen to me.

Make of that what you will. And don’t look at me like that.




Garry with 2 Rs

A Token of My Affection

On this day of love, companionship and general smoochiness for all, I thought I’d do my bit for the cause by posting a few sensitive and poignant observations about the whole St. Valentine’s phenomenon. First among them is this:

Romance is stupid.

Now, before you fire up the flame throwers, let me qualify by adding that I’m all in favour of finding ways to make someone feel special, which is what proper romance, at its core, is supposedly all about. My beef is more with the traditional motifs we’re expected to utilise (just who is doing the expecting is unclear. I suspect it may be department store promotions teams) to convey affection. Here are a few of my favourites:

Flowers: Flowers are the quintessential romantic icon. Nothing shows true love like a dozen red roses in full bloom; they’re vibrant, classical, passionate and they smell great. But I find the whole symbolism of flowers a little creepy. To me it says “My love for you is like this gerbera; bold, colourful and dynamic this week, but by March it will be faded, limp and dead.” But that’s fine. If someone bought me flowers, that would be weird anyway.

Jewellery: Now you’re talking. Buy your love something lasting, precious, opulent and sparkly. (If you happen to be spending V. Day nervously carrying an engagement ring in your breast pocket, just skip over this paragraph). I suppose there’s something to be said for adorning your beloved with valuable finery, but it seems weird to me that we spend all this energy reminding ourselves that beauty is only skin deep and that true love comes from what’s inside, not what’s on the exterior, and then we spend all this money decorating the outside anyway. Somewhere, some would-be Don Juan is announcing,
“My soul mate, from the bottom of my heart I love you just the way you are. Please accept this ornamental chain to help improve your outward appearance slightly. Look, it’s shiny!”

Stuffed animals in curly pink ribbons: I really don’t get this one. I can only assume it’s an optimistic attempt to transfer some of the immediate outpouring of affection (Oh my gosh! A scrub turkey with a pink ribbon! It’s so cute! I’ll call him Freddy and he can sit on my computer at work and I’ll love him forever) from the gift to the giver. And I don’t really fancy sitting on anyone’s computer for very long. To be fair on the fairer sex, many of the women I’ve spoken to agree that this one’s drawing rather a long bow. I guess it depends on the personality of whomever you’re giving it to. To me, stuffed toys are for children and hospital visits, to provide a skerrick of companionship during long periods spent alone and miserable. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but that wouldn’t be my expression of choice for a loved one.

Chocolate: I eat far too much chocolate as it is. As a Valentine gift, it sure puts the ‘token’ in ‘a token of my affection’. It’s supposed to say something like “This gift is sweet, but not as sweet as you”. But to me, it just says… actually, forget it. Chocolate is an awesome idea. Once I’ve finished writing this I’m going to go and find some.

My point is, whatever the ads in shop windows might tell us, proper love isn’t something you can convey with a stereotyped decoratively gift wrapped present. The best thing anyone can give to any relationship (romantic or otherwise) is time and attention. But if that’s something we can only manage once a year in February, then maybe we’d all better just stick with a bunch of orchids.

Happy Valentine’s Day!




Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. If you have just gone out and bought your significant other a stuffed alpaca and half a dozen camellias, don’t panic. There’s a reasonable chance that everything I’ve written above is completely wrong.

Games People Play

If there’s one thing single guys hate more than having unsolicited baby seats installed in their cars, it’s having people ask whether or not we have our eyes on any particular young lady. I mean, it’s alright when it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for years, and they’re legitimately updating all the information they have about you. But when it’s people you catch up with all the time, either in three dimensions or in cyber space, such as family or close friends, it just seems like such a stupid query to have to respond to, mainly because there are only a few possible responses, each as dumb as the last.

1) No. I’m still all alone. Thanks for asking.
2) Yes. I’ve been engaged for six weeks now. You just didn’t notice, you useless unobservant jerk.
3) Yes. Target acquired, and I’m figuring out the best angle of approach (this objectifies women far less than it seems. Guys just like to use military or sporting terms of reference because they are more familiar, precise and less terrifying than emotional ones) and what I really need is for you to try to help me, spread the information around and generally make things more difficult.

Obviously none of those answers ever result in anything other than an awkward silence. As a counter measure, experienced single guys such as myself have developed cunning if unsophisticated ways of responding to the query without actually answering it. It involves answering questions far more literally than is usually a good idea in a social setting, but it can be a great experiment to see how far you get before your friend swears at you and gives up.

Mate: So… any girls on the radar?
Gw2Rs: The radar?
Mate: You know what I mean.
Gw2Rs: I don’t have a radar.
Mate: I mean are there any girls on the horizon?
Gw2Rs: How would I know?
Mate: No, I mean, are there any special ladies in your life?
Gw2Rs: There are lots of special ladies in my life.
Mate: Yeah, but any really special?
Gw2Rs: Everyone is special. I don’t go around assigning people a specialness quotient to record in some book somewhere. What kind of sociopath do you take me for?
Mate: Are you currently interested in someone?
Gw2Rs: I’m interested in a lot of things; cricket, music, quantum physics, linguistics, ending world poverty, chess, relig…
Mate: God damn it, Garry, you’re impossible.

Yes, yes I am. My married and pregnant friends are constantly looking at me sideways, trying to figure out why I’m so stubbornly opposed to the whole romance phenomenon.

Actually I’m not opposed to it at all. Up until now I’ve just I’ve made a habit of never staying in any one place long enough. And I’ve coupled this with a complete disinclination towards the stupid games people expect single men to play. First dates, appropriate phone call etiquette, the ability to retain an air of masculinity whilst dressing like a freaking fairy; it’s complete rubbish. I am firmly of the opinion that ‘dating’ in the sense in which we interpret it through American sitcoms and blogs written by empowered and modern (yet still, notably, single) women is a stupid idea, and I have a fairly low opinion of the media through which society (not to mention well intentioned Christian pop-literature) tells me I’m supposed to communicate affection.

But to Hell with it. If playing Hollywood style games is what it takes to keep my dearest and best satisfied, then bring it on. I quite like games. I have an international chess rating of 1305 and I can kick my friends’ butts at Risk. But don’t go thinking I’m going to just start playing fleeting-yet-knowing glance chicken with the woman across from me on the train. If I’m going to play, I’m joining the premier league (Palmerston Cricket club can shove it). No soft targets for me. Here goes…

1: d4
------------------------------------------------------------------

I, Garry with 2 Rs, address the universal and sub-spatial powers of Ironic Karma under the terms of the Shadow Proclamation. In the presence of God and this… internet and being of sound mind and body (well…) I do hereby affront you with the following assertions.

1) There is no such thing as romantic love – it’s all just a bunch of emotional nonsense and

2) There’s no way it could happen to me.

3) What could possibly go wrong?

4) You won’t get me, because you can’t, because

5) I’m too smart and too tough.

Love from Garry
------------------------------------------------------------------

Your move, Universe.

I’ll keep you posted on the results, so please don’t feel like you need to come and ask me about it. And yes, on reflection that was more BBC than Hollywood, but the point still stands.

So until next week, and then again too, I imagine, this is me, David McGahn, reminding you that the world really is a David McGahn’s world. Sort of.




Garry with 2 Rs

Poets, Librarians and Me

Last week I was invited to an awards ceremony at my local library. I was a little bit surprised to receive the invitation, but I figured that my tireless work in support of… libraries was finally being recognised at an official level. They would probably unveil a plaque that said

“In grateful acknowledgement of occasional visits, this plaque was unveiled by his honour the Lord Mayor of Darwin, Graeme Sawyer on the 19th day of March 2010, and dedicated to the memory of Garry with 2 Rs, in whose name his beloved Andrea hath erected this monument.

“Sometimes he came here to borrow books.”

It seemed like a huge honour. I’ve always wanted my own plaque. Never mind the fact that I’m not dead yet. And who the hell is Andrea?

Okay, so the presentation was actually for a poetry competition. I was surprised to get invited because I didn’t really think my entry, which I only put in on a spur of the moment decision, would be in the running for anything. And with good reason.

It wasn’t.

I got invited because anyone who had bothered to enter got invited. It turns out Shakespearean sonnet writing contests don’t actually attract that many competitors, so they just invited the whole lot of us so that the winner would actually have someone there to cheer for him.

Actually, it was interesting to see the sort of crowd that would rock up for a sonnet competition presentation ceremony. Mostly older folk, but with a smattering of slightly younger English teachers and one extremely out-of-place twenty-something year old training officer/stunt linguist. In the end I was grateful not to have won. If I had walked out the front and read my entry aloud, I don’t think I could have absorbed the combined hatred of a dozen or so retirees all at once (I could totally have taken the English teachers though).

I’m pretty sure my poem came dead last. It was a Valentine’s Day competition, and my views on romance aren’t what you’d call universally well received. Nonetheless, I still got a free drink and meal out of it, which is more than can be said for most amateur poets.

Today’s episode was bought to you by the letter C and the number 17. Cum Tacent Clament is a production of the Children’s Television Network.*




Garry with 2 Rs

*Not really. They should probably keep children as far away from CTC as possible.

Christian Boy Weird

I was having a drink with some friends the other night, and one girl was telling me about another friend of hers who had gone all “Christian boy weird” on her. I did my best to appear sagely and comforting by nodding my head with sympathetic understanding. Fortunately another girl who was party to the conversation was a little more honest than me, and immediately chirped in to ask her what the hell she was talking about.

Christian boy weird, it turns out, refers to the awkward social over-correction that frequently occurs when a young Christian guy and girl notice they’ve hung out with each other too many times in quick succession to call it coincidence. Whether they want to or not, eventually at least one of them will become aware of the unspoken Question: “What’s going on here?”

Now, if it’s the girl who first becomes aware of the Question, she will use her inherent female adeptness for relational understanding and correctly (in most cases) conclude “Probably nothing”.

However if it’s the guy who stumbles across the Question first, he will usually use his inherent male uselessness at all things interpersonal and immediately pose himself a series of subordinate questions, each of which becomes successively harder to express without violating subjacency rules:

“What do I want to be going on here?”
“What does she want to be going on here?”
“What does she think I want to be going on here?”
“What does she want me to want to be going on here?”
“What do I want her to think I want to be going on here?”

As you can see, this quickly results in an endless syntacto-semantic feedback loop (yep, that’s totally a legitimate technical linguistic term), which causes the analysis to time out and come to a screeching halt. At this point it is immediately supplanted by the other traditional male relational response: Panic.

Now the process up to this point probably isn’t unique to Christian circles; this could be true of young people hanging out in pubs all over the country. The CBW part starts when the guy stops panicking (a process taking between five minutes and five days, depending on the guy) and decides on a course of action. A normal single guy will generally just go with the flow and see what happens. A young Christian single guy, on the other hand, believes himself to bear the responsibility for lovingly making sure no-one is going to find themselves in a position to get hurt (believing Christian girls to be incapable of such feats of self-preservation).

He’s also cognizant of the huge risks associated with erring too far the other way by ignoring the Question and hoping it goes away. That ends up in an unholy mess that no-one ever wants to go through twice. It’s the all too familiar scene where the two young Christians in Question are out with a group of friends, and a well intentioned mate of the guy leans in and asks,
“So what’s going with you and Samantha* then?” The guy smiles disarmingly and says,
“Nothing’s going on. We’re just friends.” The girl overhears this remark and runs from the room in floods of tears, knocking over three bar stools and a glass collector on the way out, owing to not being able to see with her fingers in her eyes. The male onlookers mutter to themselves in perplexity, while the female onlookers stare daggers at the guy for his flagrant insensitivity. The guy realises his mistake far too late and goes after her to start the damage control. She sees him coming and, in a fit of impassioned rage, throws an unused photo frame at him, which whistles past his left temple and embeds itself in a nearby Carpentaria palm.

Oh boy, if I had a dollar for every time that’s happened to me.

So to avoid potentially causing irreparable damage to an otherwise perfectly functional friendship (not to mention the poor palm tree), the guy will over-correct the other way and go Christian boy weird. He averts the risks involved in continuing to hang out with the girl by ceasing to hang out with the girl altogether. While this defuses the threat of having to dodge ornamental projectiles, it does tend to leave the girl either wondering what she’s done wrong, or shaking her head and saying “Oh good grief, not again,” depending on how well accustomed she is to Christian boy relational ineptitude.

Of course, what you’ve just read isn’t exactly the explanation I got from my friend in the bar. Her explanation was a little more concise, a little less sexist and not so well punctuated. We’d also had a couple drinks by this stage, so the whole conversation was slightly less cohesive (if you can believe that).

But she did leave me with the rather troubling question of how many girls I’ve gone CBW on in my time. I muttered off some nonsense excuse about being reasonably weird to start with, but it does make me wonder what I would learn if I could see myself through other people's eyes for a while.

And whether maybe, just maybe, I might sometimes over think these things.

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

*Samantha isn’t her real name. It couldn’t be, since this whole example is made up. But even her hypothetical name isn’t Samantha.

The Way of St. James

A few posts ago I mentioned (amidst a bunch of otherwise irrelevant observations) an interest in Santiago, which is a city in North West Spain, and also the Spanish name for the apostle we call St. James in English. The city is named after him because the cathedral of Santiago is believed by some to contain the apostle´s remains. The story of how they got to be there is a pretty good one, but that doesn´t seem to diminish the appeal of the city. As a result, the city is visited by thousands of pilgrims every year, and the route through North Spain you walk on to get there is known as the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James.

Some people do the walk for genuine reasons of faith. Others, like me, just think going hiking for a week through Spain sounds like great fun. Unfortunately, when I picked my rucksack up when I left Madrid all those weeks ago, it became obvious fairly quickly that I wasn´t going to be carrying it 400km across the north coast, so I abandoned that idea. But I´ve also never let the fact that I haven´t actually done something stop me writing about it like I know what I´m talking about. So I hereby present my impressions of the Camino de Santiago.

What would have happened

As I lay in my hacienda in Barcelona, looking up at the stars and wondering what had happened to the roof, I had a sacred vision. I saw St. James walking over a field of sunflowers. I could tell it was St. James because of his pilgrim´s staff and his sea-shell emblem. He was also wearing a pirate hat and a kilt, but I suspect that had more to do with the extra chorizo I had with dinner than with liturgical iconicry. In any event, they were almost certainly non-canonical.

St James was beckoning me westward and offered me a stone tablet, upon which was inscribed "You won´t walk 750km to Santiago and visit my crypt".
"I will" I replied. And with that, I set off, armed with only the clothes on my back, a big stick with a sea-shell on it, my bible and my iPod. With only the stars to guide me, I set my face to the west. When I reached the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, I decided to buy a compass. Navigating by the Southern Cross gets a bit tricky in the Northern Hemisphere.

The first couple of hundred kilometres were lonely and perilous. I was plagued by visions of inner demons and of sirens, telling me they´d saved me a spot on the beach and asking me where the bloody hell I was. Fortunately as I made my bed for the night in an out of the way albergue in Frómista I happened upon a small group (although I believe the fashionable term these days is 'connect group') of pilgrims also bound for Santiago.

There was Nikolai and his charming wife Svetlana who had both walked all the way from St. Petersburg and were quite obviously completely nuts. There was a Kiwi girl named Ella and a big Frenchman named Claude who had come on the pilgrimage hoping to be blessed with the recipe for the perfect dim sim. I think he may have been slightly misinformed.

But the pilgrim who immediately caught my attention was a young woman, sitting slightly apart from the group, her face covered by a long forest green hood. She said nothing, but her very countenance exuded a feeling of peace, well being and fair trade. I now had two reasons to make the journey to Santiago; one, to find the identity of this mystery woman, and two, ... hmmm, nope, I guess I just had the one reason then.

Over the next few days, as we drew closer and closer to the city, the pilgrimage began to take its toll on the group. The summer heat was becomming a problem for the Russians, who as it turned out were made of parmesan cheese. As we approached Ponferrada they began to melt and had to turn back to Russia. Ella was picked up in Cebreira for over staying her visa and deported back to Wellington. Somewhere between Sarría and Lavacolla Claude was accosted by a band of gypsies who demanded that he surrender immediately. Being French, he agreed and ran screaming into the hills.

That just left me and the mysterious stranger. Given that she didn´t talk, that didn´t leave us with many options in terms of stimulating conversation. Eventually I decided to make her a deal.

"I´ll make you a deal," I said, redundantly. "If we make it as far as the cathedral, will you at least tell me who you are?" The woman still said nothing, but nodded her assent.

As more days passed and we got closer and closer to Santiago, I grew more and more curious, but less and less enchanted, as her thick velvet hood was covered in mud and sweat and was starting to stink a bit. Finally, when it seemed I could no longer stand the suspense and she could no longer stand the smell, we arrived at the gates of la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela.

"Now, sir, I believe I have a promise to keep," said an enthralling, but oddly familiar voice from beneath the veil. "It´s time you learned my true identity". With an anti-climactic flick she flipped her hood back to reveal...

"Oxfam Girl? Oh you´ve got to be kidding me.
"What? I thought you´d be pleased to see me."
"Yeah, I am. It´s just... don´t you think this gag is getting a bit old?"
"Oh gee. You really know how to make a girl feel special, don´t you?"
"Oh shut up and help me find this damn shrine so we can get the hell out of here."

We climbed inside the main sanctuary and I was immediately struck by what a firm grasp of the basic tennets of Christianity the folk who commissioned the cathedral must have had. Everything was so huge and overstated and covered in gold. It would have been enough to make St. James roll over in his grave, if it wasn´t for the fact that, actually, it was his grave.

We passed through the sanctuary and now I have a certificate I can show St. Peter, redeemable for a 50% reduction of my time in Purgatory, assuming I get as far as St. Pete in the first place, that is. Quite how I´m going to transport the certificate into the hereafter with me is anyone´s guess, but I´ve decided to take the Pope at his word. Oxfam Girl was unfortunately deemed unworthy and was instantly transformed into a sea-shell.

She got better

Far from h... Oh no, wait...

What actually happened

I caught the train in from Porto and found myself a bed for the night, then set out to view the cathedral. I walked under the sanctuary to see the big silver coffin that supposedly contains the apostle´s remains. Not being Catholic or remotely superstitious, it would probably have been an utterly underwhelming end if I had walked all the way from Bilbao to get there. The pipes for the organ looked like they could blow the roof off the place (maybe even wake up St. James) if you pulled all the stops, but I couldn´t see the keyboards anywhere. They must have been tucked away in a loft up the top.

While all this was taking place, the flu (non-porcine, thankfully) that I had been attempting to out-run finally caught up with me, which was ironic since I was supposed to be a in a city of purity and healing. I decided to stay an extra night and rest up, leaving me with just a little too much spare time on my hands, since apart from the cathedral, there´s not much to see in Santiago as it turns out. This may or may not have resulted in the quantity of inane drivel you had to get through to make it this far.

Enough already!

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

A Splash of Mediterranean Romance

Lately, it seems every conversation I have with someone back home contains some enquiry as to whether I’ve managed to locate a nice Spanish girl during my travels here.

Those of you who know me well are probably bracing yourselves for the inevitable tirade along the lines of a) girls are dumb b) romance is stupid and c) the last thing I need is to get stuck in a city I have no intention of staying in long term.

Furthermore, clearly my chief tools in any such hypothetical campaign are going to be my wit, charm and uncanny way with words, all of which are stunted in the European context by my lack of dialectal fluency, which leaves me with the coherence and vocabulary of the average footballer. I’m forced (hypothetically) to rely purely on my rugged good looks and sheer animal magnetism. And that’s going to be a low percentage shot, whichever way you measure it.

So to hell with it. Unfortunately I can’t provide any truthful or even believable tales of exotic European romance, so I hereby submit the following as a place holder until such time as I can get my actual act together (you may be waiting a while – get over it).

I had considered putting the transcript down in the original native Spanish, but in light of the difficulties this would likely create for you, the reader and also the fact that I’m not actually capable of such a cross-linguistic feat just yet, you’ll just have to use your imagination and picture the following conversation taking place in fluent Spanish.

Susana: Hey there cutie. It’s a lovely night, isn’t it?
Garry: Good morning. Are you having a nice time?
Susana: I’m having a great time. What do you think of the decorations? I think they’re a bit over the top.
Garry: Yes.
Susana: …
Garry: …
Susana: …
Garry: This wine is very nice. Would you like some?
Susana: Yes. Thankyou.
Garry: …
Susana: …
Garry: …
Susanna: So what part of England are you from?
Garry: No. I’m from Streyer.
Susana: From where?
Garry: ah ooh strah lee ah
Susana: Oh! Australia.
Garry: Yeah.
Susana: I really want to go there. What part of Australia?
Garry: I’m from Darwin.
Susana: Is that near Sydney?
Garry: Not really, no.
Susana: …
Garry: …
Marlena: Hi Susie. What’s happening?
Susana: Mazza! It’s been far too long. I hope your sister has recovered from the mild case of Typhoid fever she contracted a few months ago during her prolonged sojourn on the sub-continent.
Garry: Hello.
Susana: Oh, yeah, Marlena, this is … what’s your name again?
Garry: I am called Garry.
Susana: He’s from Australia. Near Sydney.
Marlena: I’ll bet he is. Actually I came over to find out why you’re talking to him, you bitch.
Susana: Eh?
Garry: What?
Marlena: You know very well that I saw him first, and that I called dibbs on him from the other side of the room.
Garry: What?
Susana: You called dibbs? What are we, like 14 years old?
Marlena: Ah well, I’m going to have to open up a can of whoop-ass on you now.
Susana: Bring it on, bitch!
Oxfam Girl: Alright you two, break it up. He’s here with me.
Garry: ¡Chica Oxfam! ¿Que demonios haces aqui?
Oxfam Girl: I’m here to rescue you from getting your arse kicked by two angry Spanish girls.
Garry: But…
Oxfam Girl: Come on. I’ve a got an escape blimp parked out the back.
Garry: Freaking typical. Even when I write the romance myself I don’t get anywhere.
Oxfam Girl: Shut up and get in the blimp.
Garry: You know… something about this whole scenario just doesn’t make sense.

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

Mr Wonderful

I think the time has come for me to let loose on an issue that has been getting my goat for quite some time now. And, metaphorical though it may be, my goat is quite fast and difficult to pin down. Just like me.

Those of you who know me in person will possibly be thinking "wait… Garry is actually quite slow and could be pinned down without too much trouble by just about anyone." And you’d be right, more or less. But compared to the floppy-jacketed economic girly-man that has so incensed me for so long, I’m a veritable Andrew Symonds, keeping one step ahead of the pack with the speed and agility of… well, of a goat.

Now… what was I on about again (before I was so rudely interrupted)? Oh yes – a subject that has been… annoying me for a while now.

I had thought I was the only one who felt this way, but recently I heard a radio announcer discussing his opinions on the subject and was encouraged by the fact that they lined up fairly well with mine. This radio announcer was expressing his opinions on the behaviour and nature of a fictional character that has largely enjoyed the adoration of millions of fans without ever really having to stand up to any serious moral scrutiny. A character of book and films (or rather, films of the book) who is recognised all over western civilisation as Mr Wonderful.

You know who I’m on about, right? That ineffable gentleman whose name starts with “Mr D” and ends with “arsey”.

I’ll admit straight up that I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice. It’s on my list of things to do when I get bored. Really bored.

I have sat through the six hours of the BBC rendition wherein our hero was played Colin Firth. Twice (I got in trouble the second time for letting on that I was constructing alternative plot lines in my head, which may or may not have involved dinosaurs). As far as I can understand, the basic premise is this (correct me if I’m wrong):

He doesn’t like her because she is plain and ordinary and well below him in social standing (that’s the pride bit)

She doesn’t like him because he’s an anti-social git and, she is informed (unreliably it turns out) he mistreated some guy who was in the army (whose name I’ve forgotten). She finds it so easy to believe the worst of him because he’s an anti-social git (that’s the prejudice bit).

As the plot (I use the term loosely – basically it’s a series of dances and every so often a peripheral character gets married plus I think someone tries to buy their house at some point?) unfolds, Mr Darcy falls in love with her because… he likes her eyes. Initially she won’t have a bar of him because he is an anti-social git and mistreated her friend what’s-his-name. But once it is revealed that the stories about what’s-his-name aren’t actually true, she starts to warm to him. And what really clinches it is when her sister runs off to town with what’s-his-name and Mr. Darcy goes and fetches them back. Once this happens – Ka-Bam it’s a match made in Heaven.

We can discuss the implausibility of the plot at a later date. What really riles me up is that all of a sudden he’s Mr Wonderful. At no point has there been any hint of dealing with the fact that he’s an anti-social git.

Now by contrast, let’s look at England’s other most eligible bachelor; Prince William, who admittedly has the marked advantage of being less fictional, if no more realistic. Patriotic republican and renowned pommy-basher though I may be, even I am forced to admit that P.William has serious style. When the crown prince comes a-courting, does he take a turn about the estate and remark upon the weather? I don’t think so. Does he dress himself up in his best white blouse and throw himself in the duck pond? Hell no! What does Prince William do to show a girl his affection? He lands helicopter on his intended’s back lawn! Now that’s romance!

In light of this unmistakable demonstration of the proper way to do it, I’m going to add my voice to that of the radio presenter.

“Mr Darcy; you’re a disgrace”

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

My Heart is Stirred by a Noble Theme

It's been a while since my last post. This is due largely to me waiting until something momentous happens that inspires me to write about it. There has been a bit going on for me lately, but nothing that has had that… that… 'je ne sais quoi' (pardon my French) that makes my blog amongst the most pretentious on the internet.

Having only recently recovered from my latest interstate wedding trip, I felt the time was right, as one of the last remaining single men in the country, to provide what I hope will be a logical, culturally sensitive, sober and universally acceptable account of the whole 'wedding' production from the point of view of a non-participant. Regular readers will of course realise that the chances of me assuming any of the aforementioned characteristics, let alone all of them at once, are fairly slim.

Weddings are really really stupid (...hic...). I'm not saying this with any specific reference to the last one I attended (which was comparatively nice), but rather as a denouncement of the cultural phenomenon of weddings in general.

I should probably make the point here before I really get into full denouncing mode that I am distinguishing 'weddings' from 'marriages' here. 'Marriage' is a great idea; a holy union twixt bla bla bla. Weddings, on the other hand, are almost enough to make the work I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this look enticing. Almost.

I can accept that it's appropriate to mark the joyous moment with a certain amount of ceremony and celebration. I don't accept that it's necessary or desirable to mark the moment with a large degree of exertion and stress. I haven't been privy to a wedding yet that didn't involve at least three days of complete madness, running around to ensure a 40 minute ceremony can be performed without a single problem. Not that they ever are.

At this point photographers, dressmakers, florists, chefs, venue owners and old ladies in floral dresses who appear out of nowhere will be making the argument that it is all worth it to make sure the happy couple have a perfect day, and that everything goes exactly the way they want it to. Forgive my cynicism, but if everything went just the way the happy couple wanted it to, wouldn't we just skip the stress and cut straight to the honeymoon? It seems to me that most of what goes on at weddings happen in spite of what the couple wants, not because of it.

It was shrewdly observed by an onlooker at a recent wedding that in fact the wedding ceremony is not for the couple, but rather for the couple's mothers. I'm not sure why couples' mothers find it such a joy/necessity to tear their hair out over the ceremony and reception, although I suppose it may serve to distract them from the fact that their son/daughter is about to get married. Perhaps sagely fathers-of-the-bride in time immemorial designed the wedding ceremony in order to give mothers-of-the-bride something to do instead of fretting enough to give themselves stomach ulcers.

I recently heard a sermon preached on Psalm 45, which is a royal wedding song. The first verse says "My heart is stirred by a noble theme". The preacher remarked on the contrast between the psalmist's attitude towards weddings and the typical Australian attitude. I couldn't agree more.

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs