Blackpool comes to Melbourne for the Champions League Final

After last year’s victorious six pack of Cooper’s on the sofa, this year Bruce decided to watch Man Utd’s Champions League Final match against Barcelona with a crowd. The Charles Dickens Tavern, in Collins Street, seemed to have the best reputation for liveliness when it came to early morning football and, rocking up at 2.30am [...]

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Turning Aussie part 42: Paul Kelly in concert

Fran was the first to fall for his iconic Aussie charms. And boy did she fall. One afternoon she started crying while walking along Smith Street just thinking about How To Make Gravy. That’s right: thinking about it… When Bruce surprised her with tickets for the show it was like watching a five-year-old susceptible to sugar rushes being force fed half a kilo of Redskins washed down with a gallon of Coke and a couple of sherbert fountains then let loose on a bouncy castle. When she later got hold of Songs From The South vol. 2 and realised he penned Every Fucking City – the tune she rewrote into an Ancient Mariner-type odyssey with her road sisters while travelling the States in pre-Bruce days – it’s a miracle she didn’t shift a couple of tectonic plates.

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Echuca: paddlesteamers, kookaburras and overpriced fudge

Perhaps it’s the result a lifetime of seaside resorts such as Margate (in Bruce’s case) and its former Bembom Brothers amusement park or Southend (in Fran’s) where, prior to the smoking ban, non-smokers could experience the effects of a 20-year, two packs-a-day habit merely by sitting down to play bingo for half an hour surrounded by monolithic grandmother-mother-and-baby teams in which the baby’s dummy must surely have been covered in nicorette patches. Or perhaps, as many Aussie friends will observe, it’s just the innate doubt of an English test batsman coming to the crease.

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You’ve changed

“Everyone goes for coffees all the time,” she complained not long after starting work at a city school. “But I can’t drink coffee.”

She could, but it would be followed by a period of manic hysteria: eyes wide open like a crack fiend closing in on the last few cents needed for her next rock; words flowing from her mouth like endless rain into a coffee cup; hands trembling; heart visibly pounding against its cage like John Hurt’s pet alien. Amusing for Bruce; less so for Fran.

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The Lovely Guy TM (Elbow @ The Corner Hotel)

When The Lovely Guy TM is in town you have to mind your manners.
“When is it polite to start asking for requests?” yelled Bruce as the stirring finale to Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver faded away.
“I like the cut of your jib,” replied The Lovely Guy TM.
“Switching Off,” came a [...]

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