Portraits And Reminders of Home

The cold weather is making some strong appearances here in central Victoria, which oddly enough is something I now realise I’ve missed. Riding to work in the morning with the stars as company and only the Moon giving evidence that the Sun still exists is something that will always remind me of the colder months back home, but the stars are quite different over here as is the crescent of the moon and no doubt the winter will not be the same either.

As somebody who is over 25% Scottish, 100% desirable and was born in October, I am more comfortable in a jumper and thick socks than sitting in ball soup. The colder weather is a great time to layer up with the old pleather jacket and hoodie combo (a Turbowolf t-shirt also helps) and go out to rule Ballarat for a day, which is what I did today by buying a new hoodie, some gloves and visiting the art gallery!

Yeah, I rule!

There was an exhibition for our dear old Queen with some of the best photos taken by former royal photographer, Cecil Beaton, I guess it's to mark the diamond jubilee of Elizabeth Regina’s time on the throne, which is a British event I will be in Australia for, like the Olympics in London and my secondary school reunion... oh and Download Festival. I’d better do some awesome stuff to make up for it and to tell back home when everybody else is talking about how brilliant the jubilee was.

Or when they reminisce over another riot

So, yeah, photos of her majesty. All very nice but many of them had her looking quite sombre.

Cheer up, love. You’re on all the coins now!

I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve licked the back of her head. In Australia I have to do with licking the back of a baby dingo.

The rest of the gallery was quite good, although I was expecting it to be one room full of ‘local artist’ stuff that wasn’t very good. But there were some nice works and a lot of rooms to drift through. There were a fair few British pieces depicting green hills and sleepy villages like those seen on boxes of biscuits in the pound shop.

Not pictured: England’s green and pleasant land.

The small section of ‘contemporary’ art was there to show how many straight lines some guy could paint but next to that was the Australian art bit. A collection of Aboriginal and Australian born artists’ work which displayed stuff like this,

This was elsewhere, but still Australian (hence the Eureka uprising thing going on)

 But I especially liked this,

So much so that I think it could be my band’s next album cover... A quick Photoshop later and...

Shit hot and bad ass, I’m sure you’ll agree!

All very good, but now I had 4 hours to kill before I could get back to Gordon as Simon was working until 6.

So, I bought a t-shirt that was in the clearance bit of Target

I later looked around one of those punky alternative clothes shops that also sells bongs, I didn’t want anything, I was just killing time. However, the shop keeper asked me about my t-shirt and before I could answer she said ‘Turbowolf?’ at which point I readied myself for the usual ‘What’s that?’ but instead she said ‘I saw them supporting Monster Magnet a little while ago’. And for that I bought an AC/DC sticker as anybody who has heard of/seen Turbowolf deserves to sell me something of around $3 in value.

Went to Coles, got bananas, milk, toothpaste, apples and cereal. Exciting stuff.

Finally 6 O’clock came around and Simon was there to pick Ati and me up (I forgot to mention Ati was in Ballarat too, but she went to the library for the free internet)

Then I updated this blog.

A good day off, but I’ll be back to packing them ‘taters tomorrow and thinking about booking my travel/accommodation to/in Tasmania. Don’t expect too many exciting tales like the one you just read between now and then, but do expect some after then. In the meantime here’s an old ShitBad track, it’s an unreleased rare demo from the unreleased ‘Sausages’ EP that was never released because the song was a gift to Arran’s dog and releasing something you’ve gifted a dog is illegal in the UK.

And here's one more 'joke' about a painting.

Zorro was always the master of disguise