Brave Creatures

Not my usual literary effort. But Fuck It.

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My recent post wrongly implied that my UK work Visa had been approved, alas that wasn't the case.

Now it is! And I am really excited.

The last 12 months has contained a lot of challenges, things that I have wanted slipped through my fingers. Opportunities that appeared to offer me the things I real|y wanted, ended up taking away far more.

Dramatic? True? this time it's Both!

So what about the UK? Could this latest venture turn sour? Of course it could. But I don't think it will this time. Not because of any mystical "rightness" or because I am somehow more deserving now, Or even because I "learned" something.

I think this has sorted out and come through because I have sorted out my head and put in the effort. I am ready for this change and it shows in the results.

I can deal with the out come of my decisions, whatever they may be.

"Come what may" doesn't mean - provided its good, it means regardless of what happens I will come through OK.

So here I go to London - Come what may.

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The day is coming soon when I will depart these sun burnt shores to follow in the footsteps of some of my countries great cultural exports, Edna Everage, Clive James and Kylie Minogue. That impending departure has had me  thinking about my countries obsession with travel

Like them, and thousands before me, I am leaving this Great Southern Land to seek my fortune in the "mother country", whose green and pleasant shores have long held a fascination for Australians. Steeped in history and rich in cultural significance, two things noticeably lacking from a place only 2200 years old (to us whities), for Anglos (or skips as the Wogs call us) England has an attraction that is hard to define, and impossible to deny.

The land from which (some of) my forbears were exiled, supposedly to the remotest, most unforgiving place on earth, is still called home by some in the, now, incredibly multi-cultural and diverse Australia. While we eventually thrived, how we arrived here and the unforgiving landscape left us with a lingering desire for Another County .

For Australia's in the 50's & 60's there was a sense of pilgrimage about the voyage back to England, partially because of the immense distance, cost and time involved in the voyage but mostly because it was like returning to the house of parents who had cast us out of. We return to Blighty as prodigal sons & daughters, either as a supplicant. Desperately trying to conform, or as the brash, uncultured antipodeans out to gain acceptance by force.

Australians returned to England to rejoin a world they felt cast them out, abandoned them. A world of culture and refinement, the like of which, in the 1950's, was hard to imagine would ever come here.

Nowadays things are very different. It seems the whole world is beating a path to our door ad you can't throw a rock without hitting an enormous, up coming talent.

The galleries, salons, opera houses, recording studios, films & television programs of the old world and the new world are full of the children of the New New World. Children of no revolution - apart from an internal one, that has led us to find a buoyant joy in who we are, and where we have come from.

The old drive to travel is still there, but n0w it is motivated by the desire to explore, to adventure. to learn, to experience - all under pinned by a sense of play that is palpable and With none of perception of smug, entitlement that makes the average American so painful - and unpopular.

So with my long hermitage nearly over I am preparing to pick up the bags my countries past has packed for me and walk the ether way down the yellow brick road.

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I am trying to figure out if these things are fakes, or if they actually work.

The Ad-Speak around them quotes Antonio Riello, the artist, saying: 

 "Using leopard skins, brightly lacquered colors, inset jewels and fake furs, I create a range of specialized items for wives of mafia bosses, arms dealers, sophisticated ladies and exigent soldiers....hybrids born from Italian obsession for high fashion as well as for violence".

I think its particularly sweet that the artist, has named the models after girls he has gone out with. 

All I can say is you would want to have a steady hand to make these.

Check them out at Hoard Magazine. 

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This was reported in a sad British Tabloid (who I will not dignify by naming or linking to) presumably to get them selves Slashdotted to drive up ad revenue.

I doubt it's true - but if it is I will find the responsible parties, give them a sound talking to and quite possibly kick them square in the nuts.

DO NOT stand between me and my goofy Sci-Fi. You killed off Rose, that was bad enough, don't be taking the whole thing away now.

To be serious for a second, I find it hard to credit that the BBC would give up such a lucrative franchise - nor do I think that Russell T. Davies and crew would be so petty as to pick up bat and ball, and go home rather than passing the torch.

The article was clearly writen with non-film people in mind. It says the "senior staff are feeling the strain of the heavy workload imposed by the show, nine months a year of 16-hour days, and plan to resign en-masse in 2008.

Um hello! 9 mths of 16 hour days is standard for the film industry.

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Duran Duran's Roger Taylor has just celebrated his second wedding - this time to his Peruvian fiancee Gisella Bernales - in the exclusive Jalousie Plantation, St Lucia.

The rest of the band were there to see him take his vows and apparently to run interference for the print media.

Guests in the hotel were annoyed to be confronted by a very loud Simon Le Bon shouting 'You can't take photos, they have an exclusive deal with OK magazine, they won't get the money if you take photos".

But very much enjoyed the sight soon after of Yasmin Le Bon shouting at Simon "Why do you always have to get so drunk?"

I think the answer to that question is two fold:

1. because he has to face constant, embarrassing reminders of his old hair mistakes
2. because apparently his wife is something of a public shrew

Classy, huh.

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