Tour tales: Adelaide. The Festival City vibes up but once per annum. It's the only time I know - the rest of the year's soporific torpor is rumour only. Yes, rumour.
I'm being followed by a milk shadow.
I notice pedestrians are very obedient in Adelaide. Illegal crossings, when country-mile-sized opportunities arise, seem the domain of, well... me! Is the penalty twenty lashings from the barbecue tongs? It must be. Around here even the tumbleweeds wait for the little red man to turn green.
Signs of cycle friendliness.
Flat wide streets help cyclists, but the hoon car is king.
Creative bicycle racks, Rundle St.
These lovers' bikes (for lack of better term) swarm at night, pumping out muzak that seems to exceed the hoon decibel average, but it might just seem that way because there are no windows to wind up. I don't know whether they're active all year, or just at breeding time. I suspect the latter.
Although I detest the imposition of a soundtrack, these flashy wheel (and other) lights are a treat. Hey babe, take a ride on the mild side!
A cleaner's (or hoarder's) bike. Lovers need not apply.
Off to the next job.
The tong men cometh. With South Australia's bottle deposit return, salvaging bottles en masse from the city's bins is rife. Ten cents a bottle. The result: tenacious trudgers brandishing bags, trolleys, carts, and tongs. Long barbecue tongs for reaching deeply into bins.
One imagines this dedication supplements presumably meagre coffers. It's an unusual sight for anyone from interstate. There are no tong women, no wait, that's not true... but women do it in much neater, cleaner ways (at the foyer bars in the theatre, after attending the performances). I could probably be that sort of tong woman myself, if circumstance called.
The tong men linger...
...longer...
...tonger.
Leaving the theatre one night. What's that? Something odd glinting in the OH&S lighting. It looks like a bed of nails, someone offers.
Closer inspection. I know what that is, I tell my colleagues. I work with them every day. It's a piano keybed.
It transpired that the Puppetry of the ____* performers had a dilapidated piano to use as a prop. They were desperately trying to make it lighter. Tickling the ivories with one's todger is one thing (that folk will buy tickets to see) but on the keybed sans keys? Ouch! Now, that would be an undesirable call-out for a piano technician! Perhaps this photo from my recent Clunker Chronicles may assist the gentle reader to understand how the keys and keybed relate in a piano. Don't worry, there are no todgers pictured here, although I cannot vouch for the rest of the internet - beware!
Long-tong-iddle-I-po-purposeful-pilfering. Sing along!
Oh, my First World Problems: Wondering how quickly this carpet installation might progress, in the hope that I might very soon trundle my tuba flight case over something other than adhesive, or young men, to access the lift.
