Category: out and about in adelaide

So I’m at this party, where I haven’t met anyone except my host, but as the conversations turn, I discover that I’m talking to the sister-in-law of the people who used to own the house I now own (Her: so what do you use that upstairs room for? Me: I just got a window installed, and any day we’ll get my desk moved up there and it will be my garret. Her: Oh.), so you could say my night was very Adelaide except that on the way there, someone threw an egg at my car.

This is of interest to only about three people reading this blog, but here be some photos of the Centennial Hall at the Royal Adelaide Showgrounds being demolished. The mister, who knows about such things, tells me that the building has concrete cancer. I noticed the bulldozers there a few days before I went away, but I forgot to go and get the photos before they knocked it down. So, while I am disappointed that I didn’t get the photos before it was completely knocked down, I am so glad that I managed to get even these.

The Show (and it’s just around the corner, folks) will not be the same without this building. It was a small, quiet haven for that time, say around three o’clock, when the mad mouse and the toffee apples got too much. Here is where they had the flower arrangements, the avocado and the apples for your yellow brick road showbag. And the apple juice. I have two glasses of apple juice each year, and of them comes – came – from here. There were too, a couple of those things you will only see at the show. Is this where they had that arrangement of the train tracks you could lay in your garden (front or back)? I think so. I think that was here.

The floorboards of Centennial Hall were the gentle type of town halls everywhere. They absorbed the sound and reflected it back in a much more civilised way than the scratchy carpet squares from the hall they’re using now. And there was music of a most soothing kind. The kind where men dress in black suits and bow ties even in the middle of the day.

And what will exams be without a final panic and cigarette on these steps.

I was the one everyone asked ‘did you study this’ and if I said ‘yes’ and they had not studied that, the colour drained from their faces as they thought to themselves ‘bloody hell, if even she’s done that it will be in there for sure’. I only ever failed one exam. I’m a lazy person with a conscience.

Goodbye Centennial Hall.

PS I’ve got more photos on my flickr page which I think is here, but in my blog, as in life, there are no guarantees. The photos there are much better quality – I have no idea why they come out so poorly on my blog and I don’t know how to copy them from flickr into here. And I guess I’m too lazy to work it out.

Between the front of the store (where I entered) and the back of the store (where I was headed – socks thirty percent off – the price, not the length of the toe) I made this observation: there is a shitload of perfume made. And then I wondered: who buys it all? And then I sneezed and so did my little boy.

So that was a bit whingey, wasn’t it? I do apologise. Tho I did forget to tell you that a few weeks ago, a man ran into the back of my car and so now I have to get my car fixed as well. And because the boot got crinkled up, the battery went flat, and because the battery went flat, the security system on the ‘stereo’ has kicked in and we need to enter a PIN number and of course we don’t know it. For goodness sake. It’s a TAPE DECK and a radio which is dodgey because the aerial is bust. And plus, anyone opening the door of my car will be knocked flat by the decaying apple fumes. We don’t need such technology as PINs.

But, really. Life’s not that bad and yesterday was good. My youngest child (let’s call him ‘geehetalksalot,doesn’the,oh,didyounoticewell,youshouldtrylivingwithhim) and I went to town for lunch with my father. We went to City Cross which was bustling and as I tried to weave the pusher (yes, yes, he’s far too old to be in a pusher, but he won’t walk from the tram to the office, to the lunch and back again) across to the table my father had secured, a woman whose shoulders were hunched and who was seated with two other people, looked at me as she refused to move her chair and said wouldn’t it be easier to lift it over and just at the moment, two men at the table next to hers said sit here, we’re leaving and screwed the tops on their drinks and gave us their table instead. But we didn’t let the hunched woman spoil our lunch. We just wallowed in self-righteousness and reminded ourselves that we would never be so rude – it was a familial inter-generational moment. You would have enjoyed it too.

Last night, I went to the Bakehouse Theatre to see Sue Ingleton in The First Step on the Tram is Hell. I highly recommend it. I had a two for one ticket, but went alone, because no one loves me. THAT’S A JOKE. I went alone, because in the end that’s the way it worked out, and because I really wanted to see it.

It provided just the right inspiration I needed and I came home and knocked a few more pages off. PC and SQ youse give good advice.

A few things I learnt yesterday (strictly speaking they were things I already knew, but I was reminded of them yesterday in the form of lessons – or revisions if you like). Revision lesson 1: this here is Adelaide – no matter how low-key you think your life YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS. Revision lesson 2: if you choose to exaggerate a situation in order to get someone’s attention, it might work, you might get their attention, and then YOU WILL NEED TO FOLLOW THROUGH and meet those exaggerated expectations.

And now I’ve got the washing on. It’s a good drying day.

Love youse all.

I have been to Ikea for the third and final time.

I was only the second-grumpiest person there.

And after that performance, she will be putting her furniture together alone.

I know this is completely irrelevant to most of you, and I don’t really do straight politics here, but I have to just every now and then.

Did you listen to the broadcast of Nicole Cornes first press conference? You can hear it here. It really isn’t easy to listen to though. Let’s forget the fact that she tells us she has voted for John Howard in the past. Let’s forget the fact that I’d hardly call her a celebrity or even ‘glamorous’ candidate. Let’s forget that dodgey stuff she wrote about David Hookes and the women in his life. I like her mostly. And yes, I listen to Graham Cornes on 5AA (judge me as harshly as you like, but you can’t judge me as harshly as I judge myself), and I like him even more now that I read in the paper this morning that at the last election he voted for the Greens. And as we often say as we sit on the couch at the end of the day…’who is the best, Kane or Chad‘?

Of course, all of those people have nothing to do with Nicole’s running for the ALP, but I’m just trying to show you that my basic sympathies lie with her.

So, listening to the broadcast this morning, I thought could someone not have clued her in to the details on the new ALP uranium mining policy before she spoke? And maybe a couple of other things. It wouldn’t have been that hard.

Anyhoo, makes my voting decision easier, because I was thinking I might have to switch my first preference vote from the Greens to the ALP and it was kind of gonna hurt. But really, if the ALP is putting up people who voted for John Howard…says it all, doesn’t it?

And right now, I can’t tell you just how much I’m missing my mobile, because the witty texts between me and my friends would be flying right now.

heysentunnel_08

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer.

This is the Heysen Tunnel.

Image – along with a stack of others – from here.