Murderous Gulls and Eviscerated Pigeons

We were concerned about the pigeons from the start, but we had no idea just how deep and dark were the perils they negotiated every day.

There's a lot of them in Venice. You don't need to go to the Piazza San Marco, where tourists stand with bags of grain and enjoy the sensation of being shat on simultaneously by hundred of Rats With Wings, to know that your average Venetian pigeon does not work very hard for its supper.

Initially, our main source of concern was their health. The squares and alleyways were dotted with pigeons so rotund that it appeared that they really couldn't be fagged trying to get airborne. We nearly trod on one more than once, but it didn't seem to bother them too much. A slightly irritated flap was about the most response we could get. And not many cats around, with all that water. J queried a Venetian collegue about it later.

'Ah, yes,' the chap replied sagely. 'We are the only city where the lions fly and the birds walk.'

Then we found remains. Curious ones, though. The pigeon in question had met a very sticky end, but whatever or whoever had killed didn't seem to have eaten it, as most of it was there on the pavement. Its not like we lingered or anything, but you could help noticing that this flying fatsos had not met a natural death. Way too much gore. Perhaps it had a coronary and exploded in the spasm? Unlikely.

Anyway, we hurried to the nearest church to check out some more pleasant portrayals of murder and mayhem courtesy of Tintoretto, Giotto et al.: a little nailing blokes to a stick here, a little Judith decapitating someone there... You know the kind of thing. We forgot our murdered pigeon.

By the time we remembered, our sympathy had worn off. We were sitting in the rose garden having a rather nice prosecco in the afternoon sunshine, when the people at the next table decided to leave. (I believe they were a father and daughter on a custody holiday. Jim believes I am, in this respect, a niaive idiot.) They left behind a half-empty bowl of chips. Within about 30 seconds the delicate porcelain was full of porky pigeons climbing on eachother, scuffling and squawking and executing some quite impressive hip-and-shoulder action to get to sit in the chips, as if it was a salty, saturated fat birdbath. When sparrows do it its kind of cute. When overweight pigeons do it, you just feel kinda soiled for even watching. And a little nervous, a la Tippi Hedren..

We were wishing they would go away. Then suddenly they did. A big gull had arrived to take a seat at the table. We didn't know why, because it seemed completely uninterested in the chips. The pigeons weren't going anywhere near it. It just sat there, looking at them. They sat on the canal wall a good three or four metres away, looking kind of hunched, like they were trying not to be noticed, and staying unnaturally quiet. I can't honestly say they were trembling, but their beady (and it has to be said, not very attractive)little eyes never left that gull. They were so scared that it took a full minute after the gull left for them to start swarming again.

I have to thank John Berendt for the answer. According to his gossipy little tome about Venice, the gulls are doing the pigeons in. The glossy gulls are nearly as well fed as the fat pigeons, so they restrict their diet to delicacies, like the Doges of old. (Obviously no-one made them eat their crusts when they were chicks.) Apparently when they fancy a light snack, they chase down a lazy pigeon, stab it through the chest and eat its still-beating little pigeon heart, discarding the rest for the Rats Without Wings to clean up later.

I don't know why, but it all strikes me as oddly Venetian.

The Bells, the Bells.

The guide book told us that the best thing to do in Venice was get lost.So that was what we did first. Not exactly on purpose, but what the heck. Anyway, fortunately the whole joint is so tiny that you can't help finding yourself again. Pretty soon you bump into some orienting bit of water.

When we did find our hotel, it was the business. J had pushed out the proverbial Gondola on this one,it being my birthday an'all, and we passed through a stone gate of a rather stark square into a little oasis of quiet green walled garden, and proceeded to be led to a small room 'on the canal'. Unfortunately it was also right next to the breakfast room and opposite a blank wall, and you had to lean out the window to actually see the water. The piles of earplugs on the bedside table did not inspire optimism. In retrospect, we reckon they probably sent everyone to this room first,in the hope they's take it. They most kindly agreed to give us an alternative, and suddenly we were crossing under a massive chandelier over a marble floor and into a door which led us to walls of red and velvet curtains stretching up to cavernous ceilings, and a little wrought iron balcony that hung above the garden. There was also an extremely large Murano glass confection above the bed. It would have killed us in an instant if it fell.

Then the bells started. There are bells in Venice like you wouldn't believe. There was one rather large one in a tower about two doors away. That one, I must admit, did kind of hurt my skull a bit first thing in the morning. But I forgave it. You can't really beat sitting under blooming roses next to the Grand Canal with the water taxis cruising by all varnished and shiny like they just that minute dropped a white-suited James Bond (Connery version) off at the Casino, while bells assail you from every direction. None of them were quite in sync, so it would start with a single clanking. The one opposite that's in the above picture was often among the first. That first ring would get answered from some where on another island, until suddenly you are in the middle of a clanging cacophany coming at you from all points of the compass.

Many, many bells, but far from saturation point.

...things to remember not to forget, USA

Time is getting away from me...there was a massive big canyon that dwarfed the clouds, there was a town full of ghosts perched on the hillside, there were massive mesa rising out of a baking plain dotted by numerous red columns of whirling red willy-willies, though they don't call them that. I don't know what they do call them, but they lasered their way across the flat expanse between the mesa and looked like they should be called 'Finger of God'. There was a little carpark off the highway with a lonesome toilet block, but when you got out of your car a cliff edge fell away beneath you and revealed a huge expanse of pink rounded hills in a grey dusty valley, like a jumble of giant pink and grey pearls.

There was a glassblower in Flagstaff who personally apologised to us for George Bush, and a biker in Williams who didn't like bagels. They were, he told his Vietnam Vet companions over breakfast, 'too tight. I prefer something looser. Like cake.' There was a bagel cafe in Flagstaff with every inch of wall covered in framed 'In Memorium' photos of dead dogs. If they came in alive they got a big biscuit.

There was baking dusty desert with Joshua trees, and pine forests with snow on the ground, and these two things were within an hour's drive of eachother.

There was a choice of eight dressings, but only one kind of salad.

Oh, and did I mention there was a bloody big canyon?

But there is no time for all that now, because last week, I went to Venice. I mean the real one, not the Vegas version. Stay tuned....

Who needs scriptwriters?

Las Vegas, it will not surprise you to learn, absolutely excels in kitch. O, the money I could have spent on trash! The one I really wanted was a little reproduction of the famous 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign that stood about eight inches high and had its own tiny little battery operated flashing lights. Gold, pure gold.

Not surprisingly, the Vegas souvenier shops are also absolutely chokkas with CSI t-shirts. (Here in the UK is there are a few episodes of CSI nearly every night, as long as you are not too fussy about what series, what order, and whether or not you have seen it three times before.)

CSI Las Vegas is the first, and many would argue the best. (Mystifyingly, the unrelentingly crap CSI Miami is apparently the most popular. I think this is probably because old Carrot-Top whips off his shades and looks into the middle distance so often that its perfect for drinking games.)Anyway,you can't help thinking about it when you are there, because the casinos look just like sets. Which is what they are, really: big real live sets for the punters to pretend in. The Mall in which where you can experience a fake Venice dusk, complete with gondola and opera singing, is a particularly fine example. Many cities build up around natural resources: mines,rivers, arable land. This one seems to spring straight out of the more prurient depths of the human imagination.

On occasions you couldn't help wondering whether everyone was following a script written a few hundred kilometers to the west in LA. So, when you are walking down an anonymous hotel corridor in the biggest hotel in the world,and you overhear a snippet of dialogue drifting though an open door like "No, man! We can't give it to the police. You know they jus' keep it for themselves," you can't help wondering whether or not you've seen this episode before.

Or, and this is the real beauty of the place, whether you should just sit down and write it.

Morning television, L.A. style

There is a bunch of women on a beige/cream couch, framed by the T.V. screen in the LA airport business lounge. They all have sun dresses, teeth so bright they hurt your eyes, and hair with the same shiny lustre as a mid-seventies Barbie. They have been discussing products you can buy: dresses that will make you look a million. It makes them laugh - a lot - though there are no jokes. It includes assertions such as "I think nothing is as chic as all white!": A statement that as a Melbournite I must regard as questionable, at best.

Then they move on to What Lies Beneath:

Presenter 1: You know what's great? We love the control top underwear.
Presenter 2: Don't we?
Presenter 3: Oh, its fabulous! GOD, I love capitalism!

And, no, she wasn't being ironic.

Mother's Little Helper goes to Vegas

We were looking for something edible in Vegas airport. Plenty of slot machines to while away the hours, not a lot to eat. Well, that's not strictly true. Shitloads of stuff to eat, but none of it edible.

We settled on a shop that sold fresh baked cinnanmon scroll thingies, plastered in a sticky toffee-like substance and really thick white icing that at that hour,before we had managed to find a coffee, looked vaguely terrifying. Still, to only alternative was Starbucks, which we refused to patronise, and the small young woman (who looked about twelve) behind the counter very helpfully offered to bringing us a bun fresh out of the oven before she put the icing on, so we stayed. We were hoping that the lack of icing make it palatable, but it was soaked in a thick chemical-flavoured syrup. It was kind of like sucking on a syrupy kitchen sponge.

We took our seats and tried the coffee, which was unfortunately on a par with most of the coffee we encountered in that little patch of the US - i.e shit (more on this later). Still, we were in an airport. Nothing else to do but play the slots, but the coffee was dispiriting enough without compounding the disappointment by posting parcels of cash to an unseen strangers who gave you nothing in return but tacky coloured lights and unpleasant beeping noises.

So, we staying where we were, watching while the small woman worked away baking and icing and serving behind the counter, while four of her colleagues sat on the table next to us, wolfing down the heavily iced bun thingies as fast as their desultory conversation would allow. Each one of them was about three times the body mass of the little one working away behind the counter. Three out of four wore the same blue uniform. The fourth, who seemed to be the boss, wore beige.

A fifth arrived (we will call her #5) said "hi" as she passed the table, and disappeared through the doors at the back. Eventually she joined the small one working behind the counter, though whatever it was she was doing it didn't seem to involve either making the buns or serving the customers. This went on for 20 minutes or so, until one the uniformed Bun-eaters (we shall call her #1) got up with a huge sigh, and with five or six very slow and laboured steps, joined her companion at the counter.

Having arrived at her destination, #1 sighed, looked at something behind the counter, sighed again, and then bent down and emerged with a pile of about ten baking trays. The same routine was repeated, and this time a stack of pre-cut baking paper appeared. She began joining the two together. Picking a piece of paper off a pile and putting it in the baking tray did not appear to be a complex task, but it seemed to take a great deal of contemplation. Pick up paper,look at it, put paper in tray, look at it. Sigh.Put hands on tray. Sigh. Pick up tray. Look at it. Move arms to left. Put down tray. Look at it. Sigh again. Move eyes towards paper. The process was hypnotic without being in any way calming.

Anyway, turns out she didn't acheive that glacial pace without help. (In my own defense, I would like to point out here that I wasn't actually trying to eavesdrop, but it was hard to avoid becoming unwilling witness when a conversation is being hollered half-way across a stark shiny linoeum floor):

#5 - You okay?
#1 - Yeah. I jus' tired. (lengthy pause) How you doin'?
# 5 - I doin' good. Oh yeah. I got these new ones. I feelin' fine.
#1 - Are they red? I got red ones.
#5 - No, they blue. Blue with, like, yella in the middle. Right roun' the middle there.
#1 - They got a hole in the middle?
#5 - No, they blue with this like yella bit. They not like pills. They like...what's the word (she looks over to Ms Beige). Capsula? Capsula? What's that?
Ms Beige - Capsules.
#5 - Capsula?
Ms Beige - Capsules. That's right. Its 'capsules'.
#5 - Capsules. Blue and yellow.
#1 - Oh. Right. Okay.
(#5 leaves)
#1 - (to Ms Beige)I got these red ones.
Beige - Yeah?
#1 - Yeah. They red.(pause) They help me relax. Like for stress, you know? (yawns)They help you relax? (long pause) But they make you tired. (pause). I tired.
Beige - Okay.
#1 - I real relaxed, though. (long pause) I guess.

Well, there are worse ways to spend your minimum-wage working day than heavily medicated. Possibly even paid for by your job-linked health-care plan. I predict a bright future for the manufacturers of the blue ones with the yella stripes.

Invest now.

The Grand Canyon.

Yes, I know. Back a while and no word on the jaunt to the US of A. Hard to know where to start, really. Strange place.

Its kinda hard to convey the sheer scale...