Unchain the Kids and Headstone buffing at the Cemetery
So many kids are confused with their attention being drawn to so many things, it’s a wonder they can put socks on.
Our movie watching today includes accepting that at a cinema most viewers are now multitasking and divided into part watching, part eating pop corn or masticating on something, slurping slushies, and full-on texting on cell phones including taking photos of the movie they are watching and forwarding it onto the their texting friends whom they have probably never even met.
It all very mysterious.
I think I’ll visit my cemetery plot at Rook-wood and buff up the headstone a bit, for a week-end of reflection and serenity restoration.
We decided to go and see ‘Django Unchained’. We have always liked Tarantino’s movies and read enough of the movie to take the risk knowing we would be subjected to the usual habit of so many that don’t seem to be able to take a couple of hours off without risking expiring from lack of sugar ,salt and fatty substances.
We were not disappointed. As soon as the movie started, there were those familiar rising halos of smells with chewing, swallowing and ingestion noises of the patrons. Why can’t the movie theatres introduce a special room for those that want to eat and swallow? I mean, IKEA have rooms with cubbies and slippery dips and lots of balls and balloons when mum and dad go for a new flat pack kitchen or 100 number tea-lights. Most pubs and hotels cater for eating hordes away from those that like peace and quiet. Why not do the same for those that can’t seem to get away from ingesting food. A special room for munchers, lickers and slushy slurping. Cinemas would make a fortune
After the movie, we decided to visit a brother at Dungog in combination with a drive- by and stay with friends at Ettalong. Next day we went for a walk along the waterfront promenade and perhaps also look for a place to enjoy a meal, all in the one hit. Right on the beach and just fifty centimeters above sea level we found the right place.
Actually, the place found us. The building towers over everything at Ettalong. It’s the Eiffel Tower of the Central Coast. The building is huge and painted a shimmering white. The front of the building facing the sea and bay is a huge RSL club (returned soldiers league club). When we were there we didn’t see any uniformed soldiers having returned from wars, world-wide riots, revolutions or other disturbances. What we did see were many couples including their children going for a ‘Nosh-up’ which at the time we were there, had a mouth watering menu of many dishes at $9.- a plate, including a fifty percent discount on the first drink.
The curious tradition of non- club members having to sign-in still exists and it still gets up my gander/dander. Do non members steal the cutlery, perhaps secreting the forks and knives up their sleeves? I still don’t get the reason for this oddity,no matter how often it gets explained. A bit like cricket, I suppose. I can understand ‘members only’ or ‘members AND the public’, but why this ritual of signing up when they allow anyone to go and visit and then having to identify and give name and address? I would think foreign tourists would be loath to give information of that kind for just wanting to have a meal or dance the night away. What next, an FBI agent or rendition to Egypt, water-boarding? Helvi would sorely miss me, for sure.
The fifty percent discount when ordering a meal applies to the first drink only. Fair enough, I thought and ordered a bottle of Lindeman’s merlot with utter confidence. It was very lovely to drink, unctuously rich Dutch cigar box with hints of Sunday school prune and ambitious towards the fruit loaded Pavlova on the middle palate.
I thought it better to wait for the 50% discount on the glass of wine after depletion of the bottle settled in. I dutifully went to the bar again, which there now was a long queue of 50% discount patrons waiting in a line which had a rope strung along a few stainless steel barriers. That 50 % must have really been a good business move, I thought. As I shuffled forward and it became my turn I asked for the three glasses of merlot with the discount.
The barmaid asked for my meal tickets as proof of having ordered three meals I did not have the receipts, but… and here comes the good bit. She said…”oh, you look like a NICE OLD Gentleman”, “don’t worry sir,” she added ever so kind and friendly. I was feeling a strange mixture of elation and mortification. I am now ‘nice and old’. A new era has heralded itself.
I think I might just leave the buffing of my headstone for a while yet. Too spooky!
Tags: Django unchained, Egypt, Eiffel tower, Ettalong, FBI, Ikea, RSL, Tarantino, Water-boarding
Oosterman Treats Blog 
February 23, 2013 at 10:29 am |
” Fair enough, I thought and ordered a bottle of Lindeman’s merlot with utter confidence. It was very lovely to drink, unctuously rich Dutch cigar box with hints of Sunday school prune and ambitious towards the fruit loaded Pavlova on the middle palate”.
Gerard, clearly you have missed your calling as a wine critic and writer -Please consider writing an entire post on the subject, I’m sure everyone will love it! Lorrie 😛
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February 24, 2013 at 8:27 am |
Thanks Lottie. I just think those reviews of wine are often so hilariously over the top. I mean, the ‘middle palate’?
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February 23, 2013 at 10:35 pm |
Well said Lottie. I loved this post too – had quite a chuckle.
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February 24, 2013 at 8:36 am |
Your chuckle is the reason I like to write. Thanks Rosie.
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February 24, 2013 at 5:45 am |
Oh dear, had to laugh, you “nice, old gentleman”. You would have knocked back a few extra glasses after that I bet. I know the club from the deck of the ferry that runs between Ettalong and Palm Beach. It’s the huge white ziggurat mysteriously transplanted to a sleepy village with streets named after fish.
Did you know Spike Milligan lived on the Central Coast? Said of Woy Woy, his home, that it’s the only place where the graveyards are above ground.
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February 24, 2013 at 8:35 am |
Solid Gold Forever;
I remember having written a piece some years ago when I took my first date on a trip to Woy Woy to look at a Willy Willy devastation wrought on the community some days before. I could not get over the Sun’s headline of “Willy Willy at Woy Woy.”
It seems only yesterday; all of a sudden a’ nice old man’ now.
The trip with that first date was a disaster. I don’t think that storm damage featured highly with her. I had just bought a Ford V8 single spinner (1951) to impress possible dates.
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February 24, 2013 at 9:06 am |
Tough audience, when a Willy Willy at Woy Woy doesn’t impress. Was she impressed with the Ford at least?
PS. What would you have preferred the bar maid called you? What adjectives?SGF
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February 24, 2013 at 10:13 am |
I thought the adjective was good and apt but perhaps ‘elderly’ or ‘nice and mature’. Of course the days of ‘big boy’ have passed.
She ,first date, might have been more impressed by someone a bit more at ease or more confident. The V8 Ford wasn’t making up for that.
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February 25, 2013 at 3:03 am |
When I was at uni, I worked as a barmaid to support myself. Worked in all kinds of clubs and pubs, including Mosman RSL, Cronulla RSL, Port Hacking Yacht Club and even once on the Central Coast.
Actually, “nice old gentleman”, now I think about it, is probably barmaid-highest-praise. I used to call every male over 18 “Sir”, esp when they were being most unSir-like. It was the only protection we had. To have a gentle, unthreatening man come along was a chance to take a sigh of relief and relax.
I remember one such man at Cronulla RSL. For some reason I cannot imagine we got talking about Proust over the bar and he corrected my pronunciation of the name. Still grateful.
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February 27, 2013 at 5:53 pm |
How could anyone say no to a glass of that merlot, high praise indeed from such a kind gentleman!
Bad luck, or perhaps it was good luck, about the date and the V8 . . .
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