A rose by any other name

Cities smell.

In Vientiane, it was primarily woodsmoke. Wood is still the most common fuel, so the city always had at least an undercurrent of smokiness about it, though at mealtimes on particularly still days, it became so thick and heavy that it must be an asthmatic's nightmare. A nice smell, though. Probably terrible for your lungs but kinda homey.

Flying out of Laung Prabang, where the air is fresh and damp, except for the odd drift of incense coming from one of the many temples, we flew straight into Bangkok. I had only actually visited once before but the minute we got out of the cab it all came rushing back - mostly via my nostrils. Its a funny smell, Bangkok: complex and polyvalent as befits the massive, sprawling metropolis that is it. Its kind of sweet and kind of dirty. I would guess at a recipe that is 2 part sweet chilli sauce, 2 part fish sauce, 1 part lemon grass, mixed in with 1 cup of sump oil, a smattering of mildew, a burst of neon and seasoned with an occasional sprinkling of open drain and lightening. Not unpleasant, but not exactly something that you would dab behind your ears.

Just as homey as the aromatic woodiness of Vientiane is Edinburgh's distinctive but sporadic pong. One of the things I really love about Edinburgh is the smell that comes over the city - and I mean the whole city, including inside your own house if the window's open - when the brewery is brewing and the wind is from the west. Its a kind of yeasty baking smell, which always reminds me of the very fine beef burgundy pies that I used buy at the Schwobs in King Street decades ago as an indulgent winter treat. Its a kind of wholesome, warm smell which gives you an appetite. Makes your stomach rumble if you are hungry, though.

I am not sure the same applies to one's home town. I think you are blind to it, like you are blind to the distinctive aroma of your house. There are a few that stick in my mind though. One is the salty assault of a southerly change as it sweeps up the bay. The other is the smell of wheat or grass tinder dry and baking in the heat.

The third was responsible for one of the worst pangs of homesickness I have had since I left. I was out for a post-dinner stroll in the old part of Boulder City. This part of town is the deco era creation which sprang up as they were first building Hoover dam. Walking through the quiet streets with its palm tree-ed parks and deco houses  in the dark, I guess I had already been subconciously lulled back into an Elwood frame of mind. Suddenly there was a huge, suffocating billow of jasmine blossom. How many evenings had I got off the train or tram, or stumbled home from parties and pubs and bands and friend's houses, or driven through a summer evening with an elbow hanging out the window of my faithful car, and known that once I started smelling jasmine I was home. Being hit with it there in Nevada seemed like some cruel hallucination intended to trick me into getting lost. I think I burst into tears.

An America Legion bowling hall appeared just in time to remind me that home was still safely where it belonged, down there at the bottom end of the southern hemisphere.

...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...

Check-In

The packing does it for the Hackpacker. My own realisation of imminent travel came with an impromptu purchase of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Its a book that I have long held close to my heart, and one of a very very few that I have read more than once.

The first time was at Uni, natch. The second was when I was doing a week long residential course on 'leadership' as part of a Masters. This basically consisted of a Gulag-style Canberra mind-fuck during which the presenters (who were a couple, incidentally, which made it creepier) seemed to have adopted 'No. of People Made To Cry Per Diem' as their main KPI.

Personally, I did not want to be made to cry. I was heading home from that little jaunt on the Friday to sell my house on the Saturday, under circumstances which had caused quite enough weeping for one year, thank you very much. It was not a time in my life when getting in touch with my Inner Sook was going to do me or my professional reputation any good at all. However, in a moment of all-too-rare genius (if I do say so myself) I took Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with me. At breakfast each day I filled up on caffeine, sugar, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Apart from being a great pleasure in itself, it was magnificent preparation for the days Programming. By the time I made it to the morning's first session, I had already dealt with hallucinatory bats and all manner of other adventures. After that, the rest of it was water off a duck's back. I did find myself imagining the presenter as a giant walking iguana a few times, but I don't think that was a bad thing.

Seeing me through that little trauma is reason enough to love it, but I also think it has one of the best opening paragraphs of any novel ever written. I haven't actually read every novel ever written, but you get my drift. If you have not had the pleasure, I urge you to turn off your computer and rush out and find it, right now.

I left all my books behind when I came North (it still smarts), but I was very pleased to find an edition with the same cover I had in the 80s in Waterstones, though it seems to be rather more 'flouro' than I remember. I stood there in the queue of the Princes street store, watery sunshine bathing the newly-hatched daffodils across the road, wearing only four layers of clothing (it is spring, after all)thinking, in three days, I will be there. I will actually be in Las Vegas. I am in delicious anticipation of fear and loathing ensuing forthwith.

I really wish I still smoked. Etcetera. I will just have to satisfy myself with rolling down the window and screaming:

"Holy Jesus! What are these goddam animals?"

"And then it was quiet again."