Gone to the polls/BILLY BRAGG/WELLCOME COLLECTION

OK, I started writing about the upcoming election.
There were personal anecdotes, some relevant links to news articles and witty observations about Tony Abbott.

However, while 'researching' (because I only deliver to you quality, and if you make it through the babble you may note that sometimes there is some good stuff in there, too) I came across something much more exciting!

Earlier this year Billy Bragg was involved in the production and performance of a play called Pressure Drop. I am bummed I missed it because I think Billy Bragg is one of the most spot-on people on the planet, and if I were English I would definitely have moved to Barking just so I could hang around the streets Billy hung around. From watching the short interview with the director Mick Gordon and Billy Bragg on Billy's website I gather it was about self identity and what it means to be British. Political, social, historical, all things deep and meaningful.
That is cool.
But I missed it, so not so cool.

However, the play was held at the Wellcome Collection in London.
That IS cool!
Before I left the UK I tripped down to London for a few days (as you know, faithful reader, from previous blog entries). I was hours from my train ride back up to Glasgae and it was raining and I was carrying my laptop and back pack and it was all very uncomfortable so I spent as long as I could inside museums where they look after your bags in cloak rooms and don't charge you like they did at my horrorhostel. I picked up a brochure somewhere for the Wellcome Collection's free and new exhibition 'Skin'. So I made the Wellcome Collection my last stop before the station and had a look around. Skin was less about tattooed bodies, as the image on the front of the brochure lead me to believe, and more about skin. Funny that. Diseases, functions, scarring and tattoos, microphotography, implements for 'doing things' to skin, wax castings of skin bits used hundreds of years ago as medical aids. It was a bit unnerving to see some of the pieces in the exhibit but also very cool to have all those things there at once. Since it wasn't train time and I still wasn't ready to carry my things around I wandered upstairs to the permanent exhibition Medicine Man. The collection was formed from the private stash of Mr. Wellcome's bizzare shite. It was fantastic! He had collected all sorts of odd artefacts connected loosely with medicine. Glass cabinets 10s of metres long filled with different style forceps, rows of chemists' porcelain containers, Napoleon's shaving set, Darwin's walking stick, Florence Nightingale's moccasins, Chinese sex toys... Totally odd and randomly wonderful!

So that is that. I just wanted to alert you to the fact the Wellcome Collection is rad- it is a gallery, a performance space, there's a library if you need to brush up on your medical knowledge (studying surgical procedures from the 1750s? No worries!) and a very nice cafe and rad little shop. I went there because it was free and I needed to leave my bags somewhere safe. And I ended up really enjoying it. It wasn't on the list of London Galleries I picked up from tourist info. The Wellcome Collection is somewhere between Euston and King's Cross stations.
You should go there and enjoy it too.
And say Hi to Billy Bragg when you next see him...

Gone to the hairdressers

Internet Revolution

I woke up at 5am this morning with no chance of getting back to sleep.
I was trying to punch the jet lag right in the kisser from day 1. Alas, it may have got the better of me.

I left Glasgow around midday and had a cheeky 5 or so hours to kill in Heathrow on Monday before boarding for Oz. After 13 hours in the air we landed in Singapore for a 1.5 hr lay over. Then back to my 39A seat (absolute back of the plane. Good seat- I recommend it. Close to the loo and first to get the food, plus there are only 2 seats in that back side row rather than 3 so you are less likely to be bumped by fatties walking down the aisle) and another 7.5 hrs to Sydney. Arriving at 5am, I had a 3 hour wait until the morning flight to Tullamarine. So by the time I got home to Warragul it was about midday on Wednesday. My body was completely out of sync.

Very first thing I did when we got home, before I even unloaded my bags?
Went to Centrelink and got on the dole.
Second thing?
Went to the opp shop.

One of the novel things I've found since coming home that totally rocks my world is my underwear. For seven and a half months I have had the same stock of about 10 undies. I forgot about all of the underwear I have! It's amazing!

Also amazing is the fact that I am writing this while sitting at the kitchen table at #17! Having only dial-up internet for the past decade at home, Betheles has finally lined up broadband wireless internet. I know it's 2010 but we are rockin the internet revolution here in Warragul! Surfin like a pro. Hang 10, grommit!
I spent a few hours in Maccas yesterday doing internetty things because Warragul hasn't caught on to the cafe-with-wifi notion. Or perhaps there is no market for it? Sometimes Warragul is a little town playing big, and sometimes it is just little.


Marcus came over last night and we cooked a chicken thai green curry. Delish! Marcus is jolly. A good blether was had. I got to listen to the new as yet unreleased UV Race album. Chair! They're off on a mad tour of the US. Bye bye blues.

So I'm off to Melb today to get my corporate on at GHD and then to get my Melbourne bars on. Hopefully I haven't thrown my whole weekend out by waking up early today...
Now which of my rediscovered undies will I wear...?!

I was in Glasgow in August

COOLEST
in the Halt



On another note, DON'T BE A DICK
(Sorry Phil, I hope you can still show your face around those people again)

Last Wegie posting

Last post from Glasgow.

My penultimate Wegie weekend has been a delightful one.

Visited the Glasgow Farmers' Market in the sooth side with Joff and Chris- ostrich sausage in roll a winner but the wild boar burger a stand out. Shot through to Edinburgh with Lily for a final farewell to Carl. Got to see a little more of Edinburgh this time- the Meadows and the Links. Waded through manic crowds (the Fringe certainly transforms the city!!!) and rifled through some top gear at the Grass Market market/Anderson's (Big up J P and N L). Had a real ale at the Best Pub in Edinburgh 2010, joint winner, and waxed lyrical about everything with Carl and Lil from socialism to the impact of the EU 'corporation' to renewable energy to ginger ladies. Finished Sat with a pasta making lesson from Ben. Delicious. The pasta was good, too.
Oh stop it.
Action and Adventure awoke on Sunday with determination and energy and a belly full of goodness. Loch Lomond was the destination. Walked through the woods and ate carrot cake. Found mushrooms and dogs and a Balloch-ian penny.
Feast tonight, true Davis style, of salt and pepper squid, satay monk fish, roast rack of lamb, parsnips, King Eddies... many many yum yums. All things delicious.

Packed my hideous excuse for a bag- one of those plastic tartan £2 bags, which has already torn. Tomorrow I bind it with duct tape, coffee with McBetts (my off-line online travel buddy) and then a tough journey to the airport with Ben for mechanical and emotional reasons.

See you Melbourne folk soon- Saturday at the Town Hall.

Bye Glasgow.
Love ya!
Lloyd

KONSTANZ, Germany

Thank you for having me, Bosdog.
SMASH THAT Masters. x

LONDON. The Rabbit is part of It.

I sat sipping coffee (too quickly, Jacqui! B. Landau, 2008) as I sought refuge under the canvas sail from a fine display of British weather. As others huddled in multipacks of handbags, dripping umbrellas, pressed collars, carefully worn new woollen knits and the odd solo gortex warrior, we were at once in unison and alone.
A connection was made over muesli bars and a little warmth began to seep from the humming group of 4.
Oh! the weather! Yes, but you may want to save that for dessert! Day release tickets- I'm not sure? We came here last month and it was also very good. The rabbit is part of it, too. They just turned it upside down!
Strangers were united under a reckless sky, which gave way to sunshine tipping a mass exodus.
Before they left, they gave me some sound advice and a Royal Academy of Art friends-of-members-go-free entry to the Summer Series.

My sleep was almost non-existent. A rickety bunk and a swearing Brazilian. The lack of any tourist information whatsoever at the dirties hostel I've seen- with the grand exclusion to that void of Madame Toussaudes's- I spent the morning hours riding the underground, watching the Tower of London bridge yawn open and closed, and then texting McBetts for directions and advice. Big Ben loomed in the foreground as a grey shade of wet enveloped much of the city. Squares and circuses and men petrified in the heat of battle then strung up to count lorries.
The Tate Modern was very good. The two exhibits at the moment are very different and inspiring in their own way- voyeurism, surveillance and a bit of sexy bits, a great photographic exhibit; mixed media and thought provoking middle-east based politics/poetry.
China Town dinner with an unexpected and much appreciated cameo from none other than the middle Quirk. It's a long way from Eagle Boys days...

Glasgeh

back to glasgow.

remember these things?:

shitty footpaths that are uneven as fuck
spitting
buckfast
Jeremy Kyle
breakfast: congealed blood and oatmeal
Kopperberg pear cider
excessive drinking
treasure. 1p 2p 10p and a 5p
alright pal
lloyds pharmacy
lloyds tsb bank

TROLL

I ran into a Troll in the main square in Bergen, Norway.

Trolls are all over Norway. They are traditionally very ugly and have enlarged nostril-to-face ratios. They have hair in their ears, nose but not so much right on the top of their heads. They only wear natural fibres because dry cleaning is against their religion (Scandinavian Black Metal). They eat moose and small children and tend to forage solo but live in Troll communities called Trollvegans.

I was backing out of a shop in Bergen (west coast of Norway) and accidentally walked backwards into someone. I turned around to apologise. Everyone speaks perfect English in Norway. As I stepped away and profusely apologised I made eye contact with the thing I had hit. I almost spewed up my breakfast. I met eyes with a Troll-woman. She was dressed in a long maroon woolen coat over a grey pant-suit made of whale skin. She had a scarf around her head that she had obviously stolen from her last small Norwegian childmeal because it was floral and Trolls haven't advanced enough to screen print their moss-and-elk-hair textiles. The troll glared at me with eyes of sickness and death and pigeon feet.
She held my gaze as I froze in fear and then shook her head in utter disgust at my ignorant backwards-walking and apparently insufficient utterance of 'sorry'. I managed to twist my silent scream into a pathetic smile and pulled my face into a formation loosely resembling the look of one asking forgiveness. The troll, who had clearly just eaten some delicious grainy bread because there where crumbs in her moustache, had a dry mouth so was unable to spit fire at my feet. Had she not have just eaten a delicious and freshly made baked good she would surely have secreted troll slag in my direction. Which burns through synthetic fibres only.
I rushed away as fast as I could coerce my feet to take me. The image of her deadly troll eyes still burns a horrifying imagine in my retina.
I was lucky to escape.
Norwegian trolls.
Bloody scary.