Category Archive: LIFE
Biggles Flies Away
Vale Graeme Bignell (1938-2015) A big crowd gathered at Adelaide Oval for a moving and friendly memorial service to farewell a Great of Glenelg who passed away recently, aged 77, after a long struggle with ill health. Graeme drove a cab in Melbourne as a young man and then took on a month by month job selling cars (if he sold 12 in a month, he kept his job), whilst bringing up 2 children on his own. Having become a phenomenal success at his chosen career, he moved to Adelaide in 1971 to take over the reigns of a failing Ford…
Continue Reading →Funerary Music
The Village Funeral (Frank Holl, 1872) Leeds City Art Gallery
THE ETHER IS AWASH WITH DESIRED SONGS FOR FUNERALS – THEY’RE COMMON AS MUCK, OR INTERNET KITTENS. SO HERE ARE SOME MORE! L WANTS: Here Comes the Flood (Peter Gabriel) Not Perfect Day (Lou Reed). OUR FRIEND GRANT WANTS: Funeral For a Friend (Elton John) at commencement Comfortably Numb (the Pink Floyd original, not the Scissor Sisters‘ version – although we like that as well) Roll Away the Stone (Leon Russell) at conclusion. P THINKS A SAMPLE OF THESE MIGHT SUIT HIM: It’s Time (Elvis Costello) The Final Taxi (Wreckless Eric) Trauermarsch (Richard Wagner) + (maybe) The deformed lady singing In Heaven…
Continue Reading →Peppers Springs Retreat
Winter, 2015 For The Varnished Culture, it was a week of cancellations, most of which, surprisingly, suited us mightily. 1. We were groaning in the early cold and imagined damp, having packed late the previous evening, when the airline rang and said our morning flight to Melbourne was cancelled due to fog. So we got to fly at a more genteel time. 2. Above the clouds, we were warned that turbulence was expected, so hot drinks were not available. This meant free booze in economy – such a shame the flight was a shorty! 3. Our hire car’s handbrake had been…
Continue Reading →‘Stolen’ Towels and Sweet Revenge
Vines at Lyndoch: apart from its Barossa locale, they have nothing to do with this story
The Barossa Valley is justly beloved of wine buffs and travellers to South Australia, but from time to time, a local hostelry will just not come up to scratch. Best to shrug philosophical shoulders and move on, but we are all prone to cut up after particularly poor experiences, which stick like a bone in the throat. Many years ago, friends of The Varnished Culture suffered such an experience, having bought a couple of nights via an ill-advised travel auction. R felt compelled to write a letter of complaint. Redacted appropriately, this letter, dated 28 February, said as follows: “Dear__________ My…
Continue Reading →Faster and More Furious
"Just...be better."
1986 S.A.N.F.L GRAND FINAL – GLENELG v NORTH ADELAIDE This was to have been North’s revenge year. The Roosters had been put to the sword by the Tigers in 1985 and ahead of the Big Replay, the Roosters’ Coach Michael Nunan (a man popular with Bay fans as a bubonic plague) stated that “we want to level the scores.” The North fans settled in the Spring sunshine of bleak Football Park, licking their chops and rubbing their hands, channelling Madame DeFarge, wanting to be in at the kill. Glenelg was not quite the same team as 1985. One young fellow*, who…
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