Return of the king
Spent the afternoon and evening drinking in town.
One interesting part was when Jay Weatherall (the current Premier of the state) and a small entourage sat next to me at the bar @ The Exeter. As he was on the clock he and his wife stuck to a single soda water each which was a bit weak but understandable (state election is next Saturday). He was talking to some Scottish bloke ... that turned out to be Billy Bragg according to overheard gossip from the barman after they left. It's been probably 20 years since I saw him in a video clip so I didn't recognise him at all and just thought he was another politician (the mention of appearing on Q and A and Rockwiz in the next week or so had me confused mind you). I didn't really listen in too much but what I heard sounded interesting enough if a little dire (underclass oppression and that kinda stuff). Jay is Labor which is not pinko enough for me these days but he seems like a nice enough bloke from what little i've seen (being in a minor state with mostly centralised networked news services across the country we barely get any local coverage these days - even if i did watch it. Which I don't.). I kept to myself but an after-the-fact good luck to him anyway.
Bloody nice weather for autumn mind you. 35 and overcast which takes the sting out of the full sun - although one has to be careful not to get burnt severely, barely a breeze, a bit humid which isn't an every-day occurrence in the driest state in the world. Mowed the lawn after I woke up from my birds-are-singing all nighter hacking the parallella the `night' before and then had some lunch before heading out on my bike. By 10pm it just started to cool down a little but was still very pleasant and hasn't really changed since - if i were 10 years younger and my headlight was fully charged I might have headed out for an evening ride instead of just slinking home to some junk food and writing a pointless blog post. I was surprised how feral The Austral got by the time I left though, I dropped by to have a traveller before I rode home after spending most of the evening at The Exeter and it felt like it was 2 in the morning or something. A little bit too 'rough' for my sensibilities, but maybe The Adelaide Cup had something to do with that because it is pretty much a carnival of bogan and some of the revellers end up in town afterwards (horse race == public-holiday around here, how fucked is that). Tis ok during the day though.
womadelaide was on this weekend so there were plenty of people about (like politicians and singers). Given I was a hermit most of the summer for various personal reasons and the fact that i'm starting work soon, I thought I should make the effort and head out whilst the weather's holding. Twas good overall and hopefully i'm not hungover for a fifth day straight tomorrow.
Update: So a few days later ... something a bit strange. I had to go to the city to the dentist before 9am and as I passed one of the busiest intersections in the whole city I saw some middle aged smurfs wildly waving placards from the median strip. Between them was the local Liberal candidate waving madly at passing cars. Bit stupid and quite dangerous. But then again all I know of her is from the ABC election coverage a few years ago: apparently she used to run a hair salon (but the way the said it made it sound like she ran a brothel!). Obviously that qualifies you around here.
But today it's polling day and a thunderstorm woke me up a bit earlier than i'd hoped so I might get voting out the way straight up.