OK, so I am a Flying Kangaroo Tragic

Does your M25 induced irritation drop off your shoulders when you board at Heathrow and the Qantas flight attendant welcomes you with a "G'day" ?
(Conversely, do the corners of your mouth turn down when the Flying Kangaroo's cost-saving policy of employing UK based attendants produces a Mancunian "Ehlloh"?)
Do you feel a little moist at the corners of your eyes when they play "I still call Australia home" on the cabin screen?
Are you glad you wore your pink polo shirt when that very nice looking steward singles you out for the rest of that bottle of Moet?
Does Neil Perry's food make you content because you feel like you've never really left the worst food pavilion in deepest darkest Western Sydney shopping centres?
If so, welcome to the world of the Qantas Tragic.
I am a self confessed QT.
In 1987, in the middle of the UK storm that preceded a major stock market collapse, my Qantas flight was the only plane to leave Heathrow. Not only that, it left on time.
That's when I knew I was in love.
(I was lot poorer, but I was on my way home.)
I have been faithful ever since.
Now if only Qantas could match those pommie BA fares from Perth to London, I'd ask her to marry me.

No First Class seat beats your sofa in front of the telly at home

9 million Frequent Flyer Points and counting...

Airport lines are a thing of the past for Tom Stuker. So are middle seats, waiting on hold when calling customer service and missed connections.
Instead, his air travels bring him complimentary cocktails, first name greetings and a hidden check-in process.
This really takes flying too much to the limit.

From a Blogger: How do I get to Platinum?
And an interesting discussion about the benefits of achieving Platinum.

And this is how I would like to Abu Dhabi it to Heathrow

For most of us, the thought of flying conjures images of long lines, cramped seats and questionable food choices — if we are lucky enough to get some food. But for those who can afford it, airlines are going out of their way to add amenities in their first-class and business-class cabins. New seats, new entertainment systems and a bevy of additional services unheard of just a few years ago are popping up as airlines battle each other for these lucrative customers. Emirates First Class
Emi

Less grumpy on the ground

5 Reasons Why Things are looking up...
1. Dinner at The Naked Fig, situated appropriately overlooking the nudie beach at Swanbourne. Checkered history with thumbs-down reviews followed by a Golden Plate. Now all good. Apparently packed for breakfast. BYO night on Thursdays. Very pleasant food and great sunsets. 3.5 stars
2. Lunch at Sentinel Restaurant on St George's Terrace. Steve Scaffidi is my restaurant hero, although I am still mourning the demise of Alto's in Subiaco. Sentinel is, in some ways, similar to the excellent Bar One (but without Mama Scaffidi's gnocchi). Friday lunch probably not the time to try it for the first time with run-off-their-feet staff and a slightly heavy and oversauced twice-baked goats' cheese souffle. But Steve did give me a hug, so I booked in for dinner with a visiting UK supplier next Monday. 3.5 stars, but expect it to improve.
3. Cricket: Shaun Marsh bashed the Vics in a 20/20 match and then rescued Australia in the second One Day Match at Bellerive Oval. I am still depressed about Mike Hussey's injury, still irritated by Michael Clarke and still have sleepless nights about losing the Ashes... but beating the Poms twice in a row, even in a pyjama game, is some cause to smile.

4. Music: The Sting concert at Sandalford Winery on Saturdaynight. Magic! 12,000 people on a balmy night, Sting + the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on the Symphonicity Tour 2011.
Terrific Aussie back up singer Jo Lawry (Fabulous voice, delicious looking and currently doing her PhD in music). A splendid version of one of my alltime favourites: "An Englishman in New York".
Also, finally had it confirmed live that it is not "fields of Bali", but "fields of barley".
5. Humour: Watched Ricky Gervais doing a wickedly funny MC gig at the Golden Globes ceremony.

6 Reasons for Being Grumpy on a Plane

1. Yes, that is the Great Australian Bight below so I must be on a plane.
Three hours out of my timezone and feeling appropriately grumpy.
Even the flight attendant mistaking me for a famous Sri Lankan cricketer has not lightened my mood.
I did once score 3 runs batting at number 8 against the State Schoolboys XI, but that's the height of my achievement.
There is a woman across the aisle who has not shut up for 2 hours. She is wearing a glittery black and white striped pants suit (like a zebra at a circus).
The people you meet when you don't have a gun. Or a Taser. What actually is the penalty for homicide (when you're nor a policeman, that is)?

2. My cricketing hero Mike Hussey, "Mr Cricket", has done awful things to his leg. He will miss the rest of the One Day matches against the Poms and probably the entire World Cup. I am devastated.

3. Eldest son Toby missed out on the Sydney Theatre award for his supporting role in 'Measure for Measure'. Hugo Weaving won it. No one would have been more surprised than No.1 Son if Hugo hadn't. Very generous lot these actors.
At least the production won a gong, which it richly deserved.

4. Reading all this rubbish about trying to get Julia to impose GST on imports below $1,000. How truly silly. It would obviously cost much more to collect the tax than the revenue it would produce.
But thank you Mr Harvey Norman for bringing to the attention of the Australian public (as if they need reminding) that one can buy stuff overseas cheaper on the web than here in Oz.

What is the agenda here?
(1) The FT suggests it might have nothing to do with trying to get a 'level playing field', just a way of setting in place an excuse for lower-than-expected profits at the next Harvey Norman / Myer etc AGM. Let's face it: The 10% GST is neither here nor there when the price difference is 50% even including postage.
(2) My jaundiced view (and that cute Qantas flight attendant hasn't refilled my glass in, oh at least 5 minutes) is that it simply creates a necessary 'casus belli' (Casus belli is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war) to 'justify' these big companies taking their website business off shore to China or wherever workers get paid 55c an hour. The big companies need that 'justification' to deflect consumer criticism. Call me cynical.

Competing with websites is a nightmare for an Australian independent "bricks and mortar" bookseller like Elizabeth's. 60% of our turnover goes on wages and rent as opposed to less than 10% for a website seller. The long term possible effect of that is the demise of retail as we know it.
Yes, good news for the consumer on purely a 'cheaper price' basis - but we might be losing a pleasurable dimension of our daily life in the process.

We have to work on making the retail experience in our bookshops something not matched by twirling a mouse over a website...
At Elizabeth's, we are certainly doing our best. I mean, we have even put couches in our warehouse shop and will do in our new King Street shop! And Elizabeth's staff not only can actually read, but have at least 3 dozen university degrees between them.

5. GST on books. By the way, (and I have bored people about this for years including Andrew Murray - over an uncomfortable dinner party at a mutual friend's place) I have not forgiven Senator Murray - that terribly bright but misguided Rhodes Scholar Rhodesian ex-liquor salesman who was the architect of the betrayal- and am still angry at the Australian Democrats (who, of course, eventually got their just cream caramels) for selling us out on GST on books 10 years ago.
Even the Poms don't put VAT (GST) on books!
And even if the 10% isn't bad enough, it's the cost of compliance that is a heavy burden on independent booksellers and all micro businesses.

6. Ah, here is another item on the news: "WA Drivers the worst in Australia".
Yes, I'll agree with that. WA drivers see someone trying to merge into their lane as the equivalent of suggesting their sister earns her money horizontally.
It may not be much fun driving in the UK and Europe (unless you're on the autobahn in a borrowed Porsche), but at least overseas drivers know how to admit my little 1.2 litre Corolla el cheapo hire car merging in front of their Bentley R Turbo and do so graciously.
In Oz, I alternate between my terribly bourgeois (but frighteningly twin turbo charged fast) mafia black 335i coupe and my totally silly red 1989 XJS 12 convertible. Which keeps my mechanic in holiday houses at Eagle Bay. 
Maybe that's why nobody lets me in.

Opinionated, ill tempered, jetlagged and homesick...

Travel is only for People who Can't Cope with Being at Home
I have a love - hate relationship with travel.
Sometimes it's hate - hate, like the time I had a particularly gruesome stay in Rome; when I came home I had a T-shirt printed that said "Rome without Romans would be like Sex without Aids".

Would YOU leave this for the M25 ?

Occasionally, it's love - love: Last September I had the best risotto in the world on the Grand Canal and that same day had a drink at Harvey Nick's 5th Floor Bar only 7 stools away from Emma Thompson.

To me, the main problem about travel is that I have to leave home. I love everything about being home. If I were any more parochial, I could be rolled up with a lacky band and thrown free on people's front lawns once a week with local church fetes advertised on my bum.

When I do travel, which is too often, I try not to look down on Perth when the plane banks over the Swan River on its way north. I cannot cope with all that glistening water where I sail, those golden beaches where I walk, those bookshops where I work and  those people and dogs that I love.
Not when the next 6 hours will bring Harry's Bar on the Changi Airport's cactus infested smoking deck (dubiously claimed as Singapore's favourite bar and indubitably its sweatiest). Followed 14 hours later by rush hour on London's M25, living up to its reputation as the the world's biggest long - term carpark, sitting in a hire car without a clue on how to change the radio dial from the inanities of BBC Radio One.

I know that if I do glance down, I will have an uncontrollable urge to find the nearest exit - which the cabin crew has kindly informed me could be behind me.
I admit to frequent temptation to summon the nearest hostess (in my case, invariably the young lady who looks remarkably like Leigh Matthews) and utter vague references to Semtex packed in promising bulges  in my board shorts. Which will explode spectacularly once it exceeds a 5 kilometre limit from Royal Perth Yacht Club.
I have resisted. But only so far.

It does not help that I am by nature not a particularly pleasant, patient, tolerant sort of chap.
This immediately excludes my travel plans from any special deals offered by Air India, Garuda Airways, Royal Brunei, any airline owned by bogside Irishmen, Formule 1 airport motels and any aeroplane seat further back from the pilot's bottom than 8C.

Unfortunately, until Platinum Frequent Flyer status saved my life (as well as simultaneously ruining it), the early years of my globetrotting were run on a budget that stretched no further than stand-by on Aeroflot.
This led me, as a callow youth in a really cool leather jacket, to attempt numerous flirtatious relationships with airline personnel of both (or maybe even three) genders, in the vain hope of moving from the seat nearest the luggage hold (where cabin crew could occasionally share a drag on a fag) to somewhere nearer the pointy end of the 747.
The very rare occasions on which my latest variant on the personas of a wonderfully charming, down-on-my-luck Vietnam Vet / Country Vet did get some traction, I confess that I did nibble nonchalantly on chilled caviar while sneering at the poorest parts of India 30,000 feet below me and those very ordinary people in Cattle Class 100 feet behind me.

Qantas Business (theage.com.au)

However, it only intensified my fear of having ever to go back to my seat in a row number higher than my revered great-grandfather's age. Which, invariably, I did have to do.

I also have the attention span of a five-year-old whose ADD tablets have been swallowed by the cat:
I can be persuaded to abandon crabbing in dinghy in Mandurah for trout fishing in a loch in Scotland, but by six o'clock I will be sulking about not getting to Edinburgh in time for a single malt and a MacDonald's.
At the Louvre, Tate Modern and MoMA New York I have spent more time in the giftshops than the galleries.
(Do you know it only takes 19 minutes to see the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, seven mummified pharaohs, go to the 'loo and graffiti a reactionary but succinct assessment of architect I. M. Pei's absurd glass pyramid on the exit doors?)

To be honest, I admit I have succeeded in acquiring a taste for a number of things, even when a disconcerting 20,000 miles away from my favourite seat at the yacht club bar:
There is nothing quite as serene as a day shopping in New York City when you have memorised the exact locations of the public lavatories in Bloomingdales, Maceys, Barney's and Saks of Fifth Avenue.
I also love practising that sharp short right-arm jab with the Nikon zoom lens to the nose of gypsy pickpockets on the Piazza della Signoria.
When surrounded by a gaggle of Japanese tourists and German guides in Bavaria, I adore asking all and sundry if they've lost any good wars lately.
Yes, I do love all that.

But of course the thing that I really love, is coming home.
What I hate, is having to go away to do it.



Relevant links:
Why it's hard to leave Perth, Western Australia
Where we work: Elizabeth's Bookshops Australia
Leaving Home (for sale)
Proud Dad: Toby Schmitz (Actor & Playwright, Sydney)
Proud Dad: Rory Schmitz (Artist & Gallery Director, Berlin)
Qantas Platinum Frequent Flyer

Vale Patricia Badock

My much admired mother-in-law Pat Badock passed away today.
Much loved mother to Elizabeth, mother-in-law to Harry, grandmother to Toby and Rory.
She was a great supporter of her family and of Elizabeth’s Bookshops from its foundation in 1973.
She sewed together the Honan squares that were the floor-covering of our first bookshop in Nedlands, was a lender-of-last-resort on many occasions and was always encouraging, supportive, enthusiastic and very proud of the Elizabeth’s brand.
On Friday morning, 7th January 2011, she passed away just after winning her last hand in a game of bridge. Such style!
We will miss her very much.
You saw in me what I hoped to be. With love, Harry.

 

New Year's Eve on Sydney Harbour: Make Your Mark

New Year's Eve

On "Tamara", Neville and Janie Wittey's 45' Crowley classic cruiser, gorging on seafood brought by rubber duck from the Sydney Fish Markets earlier in the day.

Enjoyed the hospitality of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron - excellent as usual - but a bit worried about that Australian flag still up on the flag post after sunset. (Would have got one blackballed at the Castle in Cowes and would raise a few eyebrows at Royal Perth and Freshie.)

Catching taxis in Sydney

An old joke, but a relevant one...
Catching a cab in Sydney last week, I was reminded of this one:
In India recently, I saw a sign that said ENGLISH SPEAKING TAXI DRIVER.

I thought "What a f****ing great idea, why don't we have them in our country?"

J’ai deux amours…..Mon pays et Paris. (Josephine Baker)

20 Things I do in Paris:

“In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language”.

(Mark Twain)





Eurostar arrival Gare du Nord

 

1.Travelling to Paris



John Betjeman at St Pancras Station





The only civilised way to travel to Paris these days is by Eurostar from St Pancras Station, London straight to the Gare du Nord. Instead of trekking out to Heathrow or Gatwick or London City (where there is no BA / Qantas lounge!) two hours before and sitting on plastic seats with screaming children and smelly backpackers... you trundle out to central London St Pancras Station, admire the post-modern take on Victorian railway architecture on steroids and soon you are sipping Ruinart bubbly out of Riedel glasses and nibbling on perfect poached eggs for only 45 minutes... (Not to mention no worries about the restrictions of carry-on luggage when Madame buys 14 pairs of shoes.)

Recommend starting off the trip in very festive fashion with breakfast in the Champagne Bar upstairs and admire the John Betjeman statue. Even if you're on expenses (yes, I do buy wholesale books in Paris) and you are travelling First Class, it's a good idea to be near the front of the pre-boarding queue, as there is only limited space for suitcases between the carriages. The overhead shelves are quite generous but too narrow and too high to pop your suitcase up there.

   If you are lashing out on a premium ticket (and if you buy them well ahead they are almost affordable), you'll get an enjoyable lunch with unlimited petit bottles of vin while gazing at the really dreary NW France flat countryside mercifully flashing past at 200 km per hour.

   Arriving at Gare du Nord is a piece of cake. Head straight for the taxi queue - which sometimes looks daunting, but moves quickly. No need to tip anyone looking after the queue, especially not the vagrants who offer to lift your luggage into the taxi. You're smack bang in the middle of Paris (rather than a camel ride from Charles de Gaulle airport) and your Parisian taxi driver will happily show off his stock car racing skills en route to the Rive Gauche hotel... 

2. Stay at Hotel Notre Dame

Have always stayed  here since my cousins Jackie & Angela recommended it while I was still young... Even the loo has a view of Notre Dame Cathedral across le Petit Pont right outside the front door. As Elizabeth once said, "You can tick off the number 1 on your tourist list before you've even brushed your teeth", let alone had your breakfast croissant dipped in chocolat chaud in the first floor foyer or across the road with the tourist horde. Apparently, the hotel has been refurbished chapeau to toe in Christian Lacroix designer style (floor to ceiling image wallpaper on what used to be charming crumbling plaster and dark beam walls, etc). I daresay the rates have gone up to match. Small rooms: Ask for the ones on the corner overlooking Notre Dame, but at least second floor to avoid the traffic noise. It has one of those tiny Parisian lifts of which it is said that if you share it with an attractive stranger you will be engaged by the time you reach the third floor.
UPDATE: Pictures of the Christian Lacroix interior revamp and NO the prices have not increased! 

3. Buy Books 

Gibert Jeune has wonderful multi-storey bookshops around Boulevard St Michel. They stock new books, university texts for the nearby Sorbonne, remainders and secondhand books (Livres d'Occasion). I brush up my three day stubble and wear my totally illegitimate Cambridge Half Blue scarf wrapped nonchalantly around my shoulders to blend while I browse in the Left Bank retail shops. For my serious professional buying I deal with their no nonsense Wholesale Department (on the Right Bank), run by a most elegant and charmant boulevardier who convincingly pretends not to speak a word of English.

4. Inhale 'Shakespeare & Co.'

167 steps along the banks of the Seine from the hotel's front door is one of the most famous bookshops in the world.

Established in 1919 by Sylvia Beach and still has the aura of Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce in the very dust on its shelves. George Whitman and now his daughter Sylvia have run it since 1951.The yuppie Americans working the front counter are irritating, but the atmosphere makes my bookseller's heart skip a syncopated beat. Not actually a great bookshop, but one without my Paris trip is not complete. If only Australian Health & Safety and Fire laws would allow us to put in wobbly staircases and dead-end corridors with no space to turn around, we could make Elizabeth's Bookshops almost as quaint and interesting!

5. Lunch at Musee d'Orsay

Along the Left Bank of the Seine (opposite the Louvre) is the converted railway station that is now the very stylish Musee d'Orsay.

The former First Class waiting room has been transformed into the museum cafetaria / restaurant, where you can get a very affordable Plat du Jour and a house wine while sitting underneath a breathtaking roccoco ceiling of gilded cherubs and massive chandeliers.

The permanent and temporary exhibitions are fascinating and the size of the place is managable for travellers with limited attention spans.

6. Musee de l'Armee: the Napoleonic exhibitions

I have been a Napoleon addict since my first visit to the Hotel des Invalides in 1975. (Elizabeth stayed in the car and just about froze to death.) Things have changed in the galleries: The Napoleon salle was closed for several years (apparently reopened in March this year), the wonderful relief battle dioramas have disappeared (with all their thousands of tiny model soldiers), but it is still high on the list of every Bonaparte fan in the world. See the stool on which he sat his painful fat bottom at Waterloo... See the stuffed remains of his favourite charger... Admire the splendid uniforms of the Old Guard... Vive l'Empereur!
There are several other galleries in the museum, including an exhibition that shows that it was really de Gaulle and the French that won World War II. Virtually on their own. Allons enfants and all that. Note: Nearest parking is a bit of a walk; there are a couple of semi-decent places to lunch in what is a fairly dreary neighbourhood. Cab rank: Out the Napoleon's Tomb entrance, turn left, walk about 150 metres.

7. Degustation



Brasserie Bofinger, 3 Rue de la Bastille



If you're a browser of foodie websites, you will already know that we poor occasional tourist visitors to Paris haven't got a hope in Hades of gourmanding in the places where serious gourmets discuss Michelin stars the way you and I might chat about Ricky Ponting...

We accept the fact that waiters snigger behind our backs and swap Rhone for Chablis just to watch our faces, but hey, we may have just lost the Ashes (again) but not our sense of humour and the Aussie dollar is kicking arse with the Euro First XI.

So my little selection of (mostly Left Bank) restaurants in Paris is not likely to make it into Gourmet Traveller, and they are heavily weighted towards crawling distance from the hotel, but it works for me:

Brasserie Bofinger (3 rue de la Bastille 75004 Paris , actually just off the Place de la Bastille. Right Bank, but only 20 minutes walk from Notre Dame) Great atmosphere, Art Deco. Perfect introduction to the iconic brasseries of Paris. Staff are very welcoming and helpful with our broken francais. My favourite: the snails (even if they occasionally jump three tables when you try to grasp them with the snail implement). Definitely book ahead and don't accept the upstairs room: You want to be in the ground floor room on the left at the back with banquette seating and the domed ceiling.

Ribouldingue (10 rue St-Julien le Pauvre. 2 minutes from Hotel Notre Dame past Shakespeare & Co in the next little square.) Specializes in amazing offal (which, I know, isn't to everyone's taste). Michelin Guide likes it and they only seem to have about 10 tables, so pop in book a table during the afternoon for an evening meal.

Allard (41 rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, St Germain des Pres) Great atmosphere, lovely atmosphere. On your way home you can grab a crepe with Nutella.

Le Reminet ( 3 rue des Grands Degres) Forget this one. Changed owners. Zagat crucified it.

Guy Savoy (Right Bank: 18, rue Troyon, Batignolles-Monceau) 3 Michelin stars says it all. Special lunch menu available. Suggest you book online and well ahead. Do you know a black American Express card looks really funny when it's melted?

Les Bouquinistes (Left Bank, Saint Michel / St Germain: 53 Quai des grands Augustins) One of Guy Savoy's restaurants, but a lot cheaper than the flagship establishment. On a small side street just off the seine. Snooty "too cool for school" staff, but delicious and elegant food. 30 euro lunch menu.

Relais Louis XIII (Left Bank, St Germain: 8 rue des Grands Augustins) 2 Michelin stars, excellent set lunch menu. Amazing foie gras.

Jacques Cagna (Left Bank, Saint Michel / St Germain: 14 rue Grands Augustine) 1 Michelin star, cheaper than Relais Louis, great frog's legs.

And a few others: La Rotisserie d'en Face (another Jacques Cagna project nearby at 2 rue Christine); Le Timbre ( 3 rue Sainte-Beuve) really tiny place, so you need luck to get in to taste British chef's slant on french food); Helene Darroze - La Salle a Manger (4 rue d'Assas) Unusually for France, a celebrity lady chef...

Place des Vosges

8. Go gay. Go to Le Marais

17th century Paris (originally built on a swamp), with narrow streets, the breathtakingly beautiful Place des Vosges, funky boutiques along Rue des Francs Bourgeois, really cool bars and

more beautiful men than Oxford Street, Sydney.

From the hotel, cross the bridges over the Seine and walk directly north.

As the blokes start looking better than the women (quite an achievement in Paris), you know you are approaching one of the Gay centres of the universe.

In the adjacent, more downmarket, more student / affordable but also and more downright nastily tourissimo Beaubourg area, there is the Pompidou Centre with visual arts display etc inside a glass and steel structure that looks like its wearing its underpants and intestines on the outside of its trousers. (No, I don't like the Lloyds building in London either). I am told that it is cutting edge and the hottest thing in modern art. Hmm, give me the Place des Vosges anytime.

There are some great little short-let bedsitter apartments available in the area as well as pretty and gay-friendly (OK: gay / lesbian / transexual - friendly) hotels, but these are not generally all that cheap compared to the Left Bank.

9. Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Musee de l'Orangerie

10. Notre Dame cathedral and Ile St Louis

11. Batobus to the Eiffel Tower

12. Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur

13. Shopping at Galeries Lafayette, the Left and Right Banks


14. Champs Elysees and l'Arc de Triomphe

TO BE CONTINUED....