The late Colin Tarrant as Inspector Monroe

Earlier this year, as you might recall from the news, a 59-year-old actor named Colin Tarrant took his own life. He had been struggling with bankruptcy, despite being a famous face on television not so long ago. You might remember him as the straight-laced Inspector Monroe on The Bill, back when it was still being produced. Actually, even further back. Back when it was good. To be precise, he was there through much of the nineties.

When I read of Tarrant’s death, I thought of writing a blog about it, but instead I opted to write about something slightly funnier than depression and suicide. However, it came to mind again recently when I found myself re-watching the final episode of The Bill, from two years ago. Tarrant had long since left the cast, but the series had actually started improving again. Naturally, it was cancelled.

Monroe was always one of my favourite characters. No, I’m not just saying that because of the tragedy. He was the model of a detached, thorough, incorruptible police officer, and I always liked the idea that the British police force had such decent officers. He was surrounded by more colourful characters, so they had the issues and personal dramas, while he carried on doing his job without tears. He was part of a terrific group of players, described by one critic as the best ensemble cast on British television.

Others might have considered Monroe to be boring. I recall that they tried to give him an edge by making him slightly creepy. In one episode, at least, he moves his hand uncomfortably close to a teenage girl he’s interviewing. I don’t think they took this any further, however. It was a little desperate (as a story device, I mean).

Instead, he continued in his straightforward style until a new producer named Paul Marquess was called in to “save” the series from falling ratings. There was no place for people like Monroe in the new, scandalous soap-opera that had the same name and a few of the same characters as The Bill. In one notorious episode, Monroe was killed in an explosion, along with some other well-adjusted characters. Fans accused Marquess of being a sadistic creep. They might have had a point, except that the characters were all fictitious. However, in case they wanted evidence for their over-the-top claim, he provided it by saying that the characters had to be killed due to “miscasting”.

With people losing their jobs everywhere, we shouldn’t be so worried about a bunch of actors who should have been able to save up their relatively high salaries. But we are. We know their faces, even if we don’t know them. Not content with giving them the sack, he went on to say it was their fault. These innocent characters died because the actors were no good. The fact that some of them had been there for years, whereas this young upstart had just waltzed into his office, didn’t seem to matter.

But Tarrant’s death also made me consider: You know those magazine stories where actors gush about how wonderful everyone is on their show, and how it’s a terrific set on which to work? Somehow, I don’t think “The Bill” was like that.

For a start, you’d arrive at work, unaware of whether you would soon be killed off. No, they weren’t really dying, but this would still have been terrible, because character death seemed to lead to career death. The prospects of former regulars on The Bill weren’t good. Another former star, Tony Scannell (alias Detective-Sergeant Ted Roach), also went bankrupt. It was one of the few times that a former “Bill” star actually made the news. Most of them faded into obscurity. Others went to Hollywood, where they also faded into obscurity. One of them, even more sadly, was Daniel McPherson. If they were lucky, they were given jobs on Coronation Street. Forget the curse of Superman or Diff’rent Strokes. Try the curse of The Bill.

Take Jeff Stewart (alias Reg Hollis, possibly the show’s best-loved character), who was told that he was being fired after 23 years to make way for younger, spunkier characters. He immediately slit his wrists. Luckily for him, his attempt was not successful. Tarrant wasn’t so fortunate. His story was as tragic as Kevin Lines, who played the ever-popular Detective-Constable Alfred “Tosh” Lines – until his drinking problem, which had already cost him his family, cost him his role as well. He then went out and drank himself to death, which shouldn’t really have surprised anyone.

Of course, we only hear about the tragedies. Perhaps most of the cast are living happy lives with happy families, but we don’t hear about them because nothing is more boring than happy people with kids (especially somebody who hasn’t been in the public eye for years). But it’s time for a new long-running British drama series about the cast of a drama series, and the trials of being one of the regular actors. Sure, it’s tough being a cop, but who’d be a television star?

Darya Ekamasova at Tribeca - a face I will never forget (if I know what's good for me)

Recently, I had perhaps my most embarrassing moment as a journalist. The Tribeca Film Festival in New York was premiering a film called The Fourth Dimension, made by three different writer-directors: a Pole, a Russian and an American. Yes, I’m sure that would be the beginnings of a terrific joke, but it’s actually three short films from three nations, all on roughly the same theme.

I was invited to participate in a press roundtable interview with the filmmakers. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, because I wanted these filmmakers to explain themselves. Other journalists came because they appreciated the film as a significant piece of art, even if it didn’t make any sense. A few others came because Val Kilmer was there.

Now, for those who still haven’t memorised my rundown of last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I should explain that a roundtable interview is one in which a bunch of journalists sit around a table (usually rectangular, of course) and jostle to ask questions of the filmmakers seated at the head of the table (unless it’s round, but that never happens).

Frankly, I’m no fan of roundtables. Neither are most other journalists. But as there are only so many hours in the day, and dozens of reporters at a film festival, we often have no choice. The previous day, I had covered a romantic comedy called The Giant Mechanical Man, seated near the back of the table and trying to call out questions.

This could be frustrating, especially with the reporter who would spend her question time congratulating whoever happened to be sitting there for doing such a terrific job, telling them in detail why they were so wonderful. If we were lucky, there would be a question at the end of this hagiography. I would usually be left awestruck that someone was so willing to waste time that I could have spent asking real questions, like “What do you think of stalkers who sneak in disguised as journalists just so they can talk to you?”

Even worse was a pushy woman, notorious among the other reporters, who specialises in two-part questions for actors, which every actor present is supposed to answer. The strange thing is that the two parts usually have no connection with each other. “Firstly, a two-part question for both Malin and Chris, oh, and Topher, OK, all three of you. Firstly, what is your favourite colour? And secondly, with that in mind, what’s it like working with Scorsese or, if you haven’t worked with him, another director?” It usually takes about ten minutes for everyone to answer.

From the back of the table, it’s very difficult to compete with this. So the next day, I made sure that I was at the front, so that when Val Kilmer came in, his legs often collided with mine, making me the envy of several fortysomething women who can’t remember anything he did after Top Gun. Kilmer came across as a nice guy, and I was able to ask him a few questions. Happily, he’d already left by the time I had my embarrassing moment.

After Kilmer’s interview, the Polish and Russian directors entered. The Polish guy spoke flawless English, but the Russian guy had a translator. The pushy lady also slipped out, as she only talks to actors, presumably unaware that writer-directors are also involved in making a film. Still, she missed an opportunity. In between the directors, with no warning, was a beautiful actress, introduced as one of the stars. Her name went straight over my head. However, though she was looking like a glamorous movie star rather than the woman she played on-screen, I vaguely recognised her as one of the characters in the Polish section of the film.

The questions flowed thick and fast (mostly variations of one question: “What the heck was going on in this film?”). But while the directors (and the translator) were kept busy answering, the actress between them was looking neglected, mainly as none of us had prepared any questions for her, and I imagine that (like me) nobody could remember her name.

Eventually I decided to bring her into the conversation. “Jan,” I said to the Polish director (because, naturally, we’re on first-name terms), “I’d like to ask a question of your leading lady. I won’t attempt to pronounce her name.” I turned to the actress, who had entered state of deep boredom by now. “What was it like working with –”

Jan and the translator both interrupted: “No, no, she was in Aleksei’s film.”

I suddenly realised the truth. She was the dancer in the Russian bit, not the rebel in the Polish bit. Strangely enough, she didn’t look like either of them.

I apologised profusely, feeling quite silly as the non-Polish, Russian actress (whose name, for the record, is Darya Ekamasova) answered my question. I was just relieved that she couldn’t understand me, so the only people who realise what an idiot I made of myself are one Polish director, one Russian translator and about eight journalists.

Oh, and everyone reading this. I really didn’t think this through.

This year I included Take This Waltz, from the Canadian writer-director Sarah Polley. I liked her when she was a teen actress, appearing in masterpieces like The Sweet Hereafter. A pity she had to ruin it all by going behind the camera. I had previously read an early version of the screenplay for this movie, which I despised. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether to grab a coffee on the way to the screening, thinking that it might just interfere with the movie’s job of sending me to sleep. Fortunately, the script had gone through a few changes, so I actually enjoyed some of it. Not much of it, mind you.

This is about a woman married to a nice guy, who meets another guy and thinks, “What a guy!” She is torn between the man she married, who is remarkably tolerant, and the man across the street, who presumably makes a pleasant change from domestic bliss. Like most indie film heroines of the past two years, this woman is played by Michelle Williams, who is really very good. If Polley has a major strength, it is working with actors (as you’d imagine). Everyone seems so natural in this film, so that you’d barely know that they were reciting lines in a script. Williams is so natural that, even with this pretentious dialogue, you can somehow believe her, and when she delivers funny lines, you don’t laugh like you would in a romantic comedy. Instead, you think “This woman is truly annoying.”

Yes, she really is. She is spoilt and self-absorbed (hence the storyline). She speaks with her husband in baby talk and inside jokes, which is cute for about half a scene before it gets really, really grating. You don’t know which of these guys she will choose, but both of them are at least willing to tell her occasionally (but not often enough) what a nitwit she is.

I wanted to know what the women in the audience thought, and lo and behold, they all agreed that she was an annoying person with the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old. At first, I blamed the fact that the writer-director was a former child star. But then another film writer suggested that she probably wasn’t even meant to be likeable. Perhaps so.

Next I saw As Luck Would Have It [La chispa de la vida], a very pertinent film, with much to say about modern celebrity, media, and the desperate steps that people will take in the global financial crisis. And Salma Hayek. You’d expect it to be a talked-about film in both the US and Australia, except that it’s a Spanish film, with subtitles. A pity, because it’s really rather good. It starts out as a black comedy, but becomes something else. I won’t spoil it, on the off chance that it actually gets wide release (or is remade as a Hollywood film, starring Miley Cyrus or someone equally ridiculous).

The next day I saw The Girl, which starred Australia’s own Abbie Cornish (as opposed to, say, South Korea’s own Abbie Cornish) as a struggling Texan trailer-dweller in Mexico. Like the hero of As Luck Would Have It, unemployment and poverty take her to desperate lengths. It seems to be a pattern with this year’s festival, which makes perfect sense in these times. Cornish is excellent in this film, even better than she was in “Somersault”, despite saying most of her lines in Spanish (just like Salma Hayek). The only problem with her casting is her gorgeousness. She could have played opposite Rita Hayworth or Grace Kelly and still looked good. Though she’s playing a messed-up woman, down on her luck, the make-up and cinematography make little attempt to de-glam her. That’s left to her performance.

During the Great Depression, movies showed glamorous lifestyles. Since then, more realism has crept in, so the movies of the current recession have characters with even less money than most of the audience. It’s up to the British to keep old traditions going, so they do historical dramas like Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. This is set in the 1930s (the Great Depression itself, but nobody mentions that), around an upper-class family, of course.

This seems odd. To get into the big league of Tribeca, movies usually have to be interesting and unusual. The only thing unusual about upper-class British period flicks is that anyone would still want to see them. So what’s it doing in Tribeca?

Upon watching it, I had a theory: it’s at Tribeca because it’s wonderful! I’ve now decided that, if a Tribeca film seems like the sort of movie you’ve seen over and over again, it’s probably there because it’s a really, really good model of its kind. Next time, I’m only watching the dull-looking films.

Challenging Impossibility

In a few days, the Tribeca Film Festival begins in New York. A decade after it was first held, this is already considered one of the world’s most important film festivals. But how much help is Tribeca for an up-and-coming filmmaker – especially if you make short films, or documentaries… or even short documentaries?

I’ve been talking to Natabara Rollosson and Sanjay Rawal, whose film Challenging Impossibility screened at Tribeca last year. They even found a novel way to promote the film, at a shopfront in quiet Jay Street in downtown Manhattan.

Challenging Impossibility was about their meditation teacher, the late Sri Chinmoy, and his weightlifting, which he started at age 53. He made astonishing progress, starting with light weights (naturally) and moving on to people. It is one of 60 short films at Tribeca.

While they might have been obscured by all the new features, a maker of short films could hardly ask for a better launching pad. “We’re hoping the premiere at Tribeca will open doors to many other film festivals so this film can reach a global audience,” said Natabara (formerly Mark Rollosson; he was given his spiritual name by Sri Chinmoy). “This film shows that we all have unlimited capacity within us, and its a message that carries a lot of hope and inspiration for people of all ages.”

A year later, like many festival films (especially short docs), it doesn’t yet have wide distribution (though Tribeca was followed by many other festivals). It does, however, have plenty of feedback from higher levels of the industry, which the filmmakers have used to make a new, improved version.

The Tribeca Film Festival is big business. It still doesn’t have the prestige of Cannes, nor the box-office power of Toronto. It isn’t even the greatest way to unveil independent American film; that title still goes to Sundance. However, it’s a good start. For Challenging Impossibility, Sanjay (formerly… Sanjay Rawal; he is Indian-American) booked that Jay Street shopfront for an exhibition dedicated to Sri Chinmoy’s weightlifting. Photos of his more incredible lifts were displayed next to the specially-constructed weightlifting equipment used to hold the more unusual weights. The exhibition launch had star power, including pop legend Roberta Flack, and a reception after the first screening included such luminaries as Olympic legend Carl Lewis, and Canadian weightlifting champion Hugo Girard, who had presented a talk there the previous night.

Girard’s association makes sense, but what drew the likes of Lewis and Flack to the exhibition? Well, that’s a cool part of the story. Sri Chinmoy used his weightlifting prowess to honour “men and women of inspiration” with the Lifting Up the World program, in which he would, quite literally, lift them overhead on a special platform. It was certainly more interesting than giving them a medal (though they got one of those as well). Most of the honorees were relatively obscure, but a few were famous. Nelson Mandela was lifted while President of South Africa; the late David Lange while Prime Minister of New Zealand. Richard Gere and Ricky Martin. Sting and Philip Glass. Susan Sarandon and Donna Karan. Self-effacing surf legend Kelly Slater was lifted alongside flamboyant Oscar-winner F Murray Abraham (for no special reason, apart from the fact that they were both available at the same time). With such people honoured (and in many cases, greatly humbled), there is plenty of celebrity support.

Naturally, this helps at Tribeca. Getting on the schedule, chosen from thousands of of short films, is only the first hurdle. Getting attention, amidst everything else, is crucial. Like all the Tribeca shorts, Challenging Impossibility was packaged as part of a feature-length anthology – in this case, One for All, a package of four documentaries with “inspiration” as the link. It shared space with three other films, none of which had a great deal in common: In the Spirit of Laxmi, about a man raising an injured leopard in India’s Rajasthan province; Sun City Picture House, about building a new cinema in Haiti after the last of Haiti’s colonial movie theatres is destroyed in the earthquake; and Summer Snapshot, using home movie footage from the seventies to reflect on “the fleeting window of time between youth and adulthood.”

If you bought an unlimited pass to Tribeca and saw nothing but short films, you might find it very rewarding – or at the very least, endlessly fascinating. For the makers of Challenging Impossibility, despite their fascinating subject, it was enough of a challenge to stand out amongst the other shorts, to say nothing of the exciting feature film slate.

And now… the sequel. Not a sequel to the film, but to the almost-as-dramatic story of selling a film. Filmmaking is a long game to enter. Challenging Impossibility was good enough to screen at Tribeca. Now it has been remade… and will soon be relaunched.

I’ve never visited the Tower of London either, or even the London Eye (which didn’t exist when I first visited and was more into tourist sites). But the attraction I’m talking about is the zebra crossing that the Beatles cross on the cover of “Abbey Road”. It’s been in numerous movies and TV shows, in which characters cross the road just like the Beatles after doing some London fashion shopping. (Exactly where they’ve been shopping, I’m not sure. This particular patch of northwest London isn’t really that close to Oxford Street.)

Much as I love the Beatles (like everyone does), zebra crossings don’t usually appeal to my aesthetic sense, so I hadn’t visited previously. This time, however, I thought I’d make the pilgrimage to the relatively quiet St John’s Wood train station, where the tiny and unpretentious Beatles Coffee Shop happily resists the temptation to sell strawberry fields smoothies and yellow cheese-and-rocket submarines. It does, however, stock plenty of official Beatles merchandise. And the staff are used to the usual questions. If you ask the directions to Abbey Road, they won’t roll their eyes in annoyance, any more than they will roll their eyes if you ask for an espresso. It’s part of the job.

Photos of tourists crossing Abbey Road have become just as corny and obvious as photos of tourists pretending to prop up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s just too irresistible.  I was at the crossing for five minutes, to witness a number of tourists arriving with pocket cameras, snapping each other as they crossed the road. (Most photos were taken from the wrong angle entirely, presumably because they knew they’d probably be hit by a car if they did it from the right angle.) If it wasn’t a public road, no doubt the City of London would have started charging admission by now.

It must surely be the road that motorists most dread visiting in this part of London. Not one of the busiest streets, but they can expect to be delayed while people walk across it, pausing on the way for photos. (Whether people spend time arguing who gets to be up the front, thereby taking on John Lennon’s role, I shudder to think.)  It is one building away from the famous Abbey Road Studios themselves, which are not open to the public because, well, they’re recording studios.

If you really want to salute the Beatles, of course, you should visit their hometown of Liverpool, where they have a Beatles museum and numerous 50^th anniversary celebrations over the course of the decade for the numerous Beatles-related milestones that happened between 1960 and 1967. Alternatively, you should go to the quaint village of Canterbury (which has nothing to do with the Beatles, as far as I know, but is definitely a nice place).

Monuments to musical heroes are certainly worth visiting (as is Canterbury). I understand that Australia’s most visited gravesite is Bon Scott’s tomb in Perth.

Vienna, however, is the mecca for musicians. Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Falco (the guy who sang “Rock Me, Amadeus”) are all buried there. And if you’re not satisfied with the Mozart museums, Mozart memorials and wall-to-wall Mozart in the composer’s hometown of Salzburg, you can get even more Mozart in Vienna. (He was also buried there, but nobody’s sure where.) Vienna has been one of my favourite cities ever since my first visit (which was, ooh, four weeks ago), and apart from the coffee houses, which are enough reason to go on their own, the best thing is the music.

They have an unusual museum in Vienna called the House of Music, where you can “compose” music by rolling dice (which, apparently, Haydn and Mozart used to do) and try to conduct an orchestra. You can also do weird, experimental music by going into a room and doing weird stuff with weird device.

The House of Music has all sorts of cool things to get kids interested in classical music, including a series of phones in which you can listen to Beethoven’s music at different volumes, reflecting his gradual loss of hearing. As almost everyone has noted in the past, it’s astonishing to think that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote some of his best music.

Great artists, of course, exceed their limitations. Kamahl, for example, is able to perform despite his appalling fashion sense. Elvis continued to sell millions of records, despite being dead (and having no retail sales experiences). Moreover, not many people know that Michelangelo went blind later in life and painted some of his greatest paintings while sightless. Maria Callas went mute in her later years, but she continued to appear on stage, performing Verdi operas despite being unable to speak. It’s amazing what you can learn.

Failing that, it’s amazing what you can make up.

You probably still have vivid memories of 2000: Sydney’s “best Olympics ever”. Cathy Freeman at the Olympics. Hackett versus Perkins at, er, the Olympics. Oh yeah, there was also the reconciliation walk, the Northern Territory deaths in custody, the Childers backpacker fire, Siobhan Paton’s gold medal-winning streak at the Sydney Paralympics (which is different from the Olympics, so there).

Listening to the final episode of Sounds of the Century, I could re-live all of that. Well, not really. They didn’t even mention Cathy Freeman. Sure, the Olympic moments were there, but mainly the stuff about Britain, which apparently also won a couple of medals.

Are you surprised that Australia was so ignored? I wasn’t. I’m in Britain now, and I’ve been here a few times previously. Moreover, I’ve been listening to this show for the past year. Remember 1975? A year so significant for Australia that I wrote a book about it, fittingly called 1975: Australia’s Greatest Year. But did this radio show include us in the news of that year? The Dismissal? Balibo? Picnic at Hanging Rock? No, the closest thing to an Australian reference was the Bee Gees, those ex-Queenslanders, singing “Jive Talking”.

This radio show replayed the trials and tribulations of their other ex-colonies, like Zimbabwe and South Africa, but the Dismissal and the Rudd “assassination” weren’t nearly as exciting as the rise of Mugabe or the fall of Apartheid. Sure, they included Neighbours, but they didn’t even mention Crocodile Dundee.

We might have an elevated idea of how much the world knows about us. Even the British couldn’t care less about our big stories. When I stayed here for a few months in 1997, I remember listening to a news-based comedy show in which an unnamed Australian Prime Minister was portrayed as a belching, beer-swilling yobbo. Whatever you thought of John Howard, it was nothing like him. (Don’t you love stereotypes? If you’re doing a satire, and want to portray Britons as upper-class nobs who moan all the time and say “What ho, chaps,” please do so.)

So what does the world know about Australia? Having been to a few places, I’m getting a general idea. Kangaroos, basically. Occasionally, they hear about other things. I was in New York when Steve Irwin died, and everyone was terribly upset, hoping that I was able to cope with this loss. In Japan recently, a few of us listed famous Australians to a businessmen, but he didn’t nod with recognition until we mentioned Kylie Minogue. In fact, she seems to be famous everywhere nowadays, not just the UK. We give the world Howard Florey and Dame Joan Sutherland, but all they know is the Singing Budgie.

But whenever you meet someone who actually keeps in touch with Australian politics, they know it for one thing: how wonderful our government is. No, seriously. They can’t recall anyone’s names, but they are aware that the economy is strong, the PM is a woman and the Treasurer has been named as the world’s greatest. They are surprised when I tell them that the government is very unpopular. The average Australian, it seems, thinks not only that our economy in mess, but that it’s our Treasurer’s fault. We tend to agree that Julia Gillard is a woman, however.

Perhaps we know better than everyone else. That would make sense, as we’re Australians. Or perhaps it calls to mind the old saying about prophets never being recognised in their own country. Sister Kenny developed a cure for polio, but she was only taken seriously overseas. Ralph Sarich invented the orbital engine, but sold it somewhere else. Whatever you think of his work, Nick Cave is a star in Europe, but in Australia he’s only a star with rock critics (and when he does duets with Kylie Minogue).

Of course, it’s not confined to Australia. Barack Obama is still universally admired, but not so popular in the US. Many of us regard Gorbachev as a great historical figure, but Russians still dislike him with a passion.

There’s an obvious solution: from now on, the only people who should be allowed to vote in a country’s elections should be people who don’t live in the place. We can vote for Obama (as most non-Americans would do), while everyone else can vote in our elections, if they have the foggiest idea who any of the candidates are. Think of the benefits. Italy could have avoided Berlusconi if only non-Italians were allowed to vote in their elections.

We could even extend this to other matters of national importance, like choosing the greatest-ever Australian albums.

On second thought, scrap that idea. They’d probably include something by Kylie Minogue.

Some of the food from a Paris patisserie. Now THIS is vegetarian!

A common claim about French people is that they behave rudely and arrogantly to anyone who doesn’t speak French. Happily, this isn’t true of all French waiters and patisserie assistants; just most of them. Actually, not even most. They will smile and be polite to most English-speakers. As their English isn’t always superb, however, they want to get it over with quickly. In my experience, the best way to make a French person roll their eyes and shake their head over what an appalling peasant you are is to try to communicate with them in French. When that’s happened, I imagine, they thought I was dopey not because they’d worked out I didn’t know French, but because they assumed I had no communication skills.

But if you still want to see a French pastry shop assistant look uppity (and exactly why you’d want that, I’m not sure), try asking for vegetarian food. I once wrote a magazine article about the trials of vegetarian travel, in which I mentioned the French snobbery for vegetarians. The editor emailed back: “We all know the stereotype of French being food snobs. Tell us what it’s really like.”

It has occasionally happened that, after throughly researching an article, you are still faced with an editor who believes that they know best and wishes to correct you. In truth, even if this editor had visited Paris on a regular basis, chances are he didn’t wander from restaurant to restaurant, asking whether they had any vegetarian food. Some stereotypes are there because they contain a whiff of truth. French people, for example, can’t understand those who don’t appreciate the joys of a filet mignon. Even going to a patisserie isn’t so simple, as everything’s labeled in French. Those cunning Parisians!

So negotiating the Parisian culinary scene is still challenging. If you ask for something vegetarian, and they give you something with “thon”, it’s tuna. You probably know what “quiche” means, but you have to know what they’ve thrown into it. If it says “Florentine”, don’t be fooled; unlike most places, a Florentine in France can have plenty of meat mixed in with the spinach. In fact, when you buy anything in France, just assume that it’s laced with ham. The quiches, the baguettes, the chocolate eclairs (no doubt). A croque monsieur is cheese and ham on toast. Just give it a French name and it suddenly seems wonderfully exotic.

The menus of French bistros also advertise “legumes” in the dishes. Exactly what type of legumes, they don’t specify. Looking for a dinner place with a friend, who has lived in Paris for years, I wondered what “legumes” we could expect. “They don’t think they’re even important enough to list,” she said. “That’s just included in the menu to warn people that it’s not all meat.”

My last dinner in Paris was a nice home-cooked meal with tofu and vegetables.

Obviously, Stratford is very proud of its most famous son (and yes, that’s still Shakespeare, because nobody from the Arctic Monkeys was born there). It’s one of those places that still has Tudor-style buildings, just like in his day. One thing I don’t notice now, but I recalled seeing in 1997, was numerous pubs with signs saying “Shakespeare drank here.” This time, I saw no such signs, though I one pub called The Garrick Arms (named, presumably, after the greatest Shakespeare actor of the eighteenth century) boasts with equal pride that it is “Stratford’s oldest pub”, serving since 1594, when Shakespeare was 30. He probably drank there at some time.

We can safely say that most of the nice restaurants now filling the streets were not there in Shakespeare’s time. The sushi restaurant, for example, was probably an alehouse called The Cousin’s Armpit or something equally un-Japanese. Know-alls who insist that Shakespeare didn’t write anything will often mention, without any encouragement, that he knew Italy so well and, as a mere tradesman’s son, he never could have known that much. Nowadays, however, there is no shortage of Italian restaurants within a few blocks his house

Across the road is the Mercure Shakespeare, the Tudor-style (of course) hotel where I’m staying. Every room is named after a Shakespeare play or character. Apparently, the interiors of all the rooms look very different as well. If you know that, you can choose your room. Lovers can stay in “Romeo and Juliet”. (Every young couple wants to be like them, even though their story is a total downer.) Witty, fun-loving people can stay in “As You Like It”. Heroic people (or those with a high opinion of themselves) can stay in “Henry V”. And if you can’t make up your mind, you can stay in “Hamlet”. There’s even a room called “Titus Andronicus”. As this utterly gory play was the Saw franchise of its time, I assume that this is a room for nutjobs, complete with a bed-of-nails.

In its original form, the building actually does date back to Shakespeare’s day. Though it’s been re-upholstered several times since then, the corridors have a wonderfully aged quality about them, complete with several sepia-tinted sketches framed on the walls. This gave me the obvious conclusion: it was haunted. This seemed very cool, and I was pleased to see a plaque in the doorway claiming as much. Sadly, nobody there had ever seen the ghost. Next time I go, I’ll stay in the most ghostly room, which is presumably called “Hamlet’s Father”.

Now that I was staying the night in the Bard’s home town, I was all set to see a play just around the corner at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The fact that I had plenty of work to do (and I was so tired that I’d probably sleep through anything, even Titus Andronicus) did not deter me. I went there ready for whatever they were showing, be it the fantasy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the revelry of Twelfth Night or the noble tragedy of Othello.

I asked what was playing that night. It was Measure for Measure. I decided that I’d stay in my room, do some writing, and have an early night. I’m sure it’s a great play, but I know nothing whatsoever about it. Hence, as my Shakespearean is almost as rusty as my Indonesian, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to me. It proves that there is such a thing as an obscure Shakespeare play, just as “Misery” and “Don’t Bother Me” prove that there is such a thing as an obscure Beatles song, or Timothy Dalton proves that there is an obscure James Bond. Measure for Measure might well be the most obscure of all Shakespeare plays. Is it about tailors? Glove-makers? Even King John is more famous, if only because of the main character.

One thing that strikes me about Stratford-Upon-Avon is probably due to the Shakespeare influence. Quite simply, it’s full of bookstores. No, it’s not one of those villages full of quaint, second-hand bookstores. We’re talking chains, I’m afraid. Waterstone’s. The Works. Borders (only joking). From one street corner, I can see two W H Smith stores, making this as over-represented here as Starbucks or McDonald’s in other towns. (Both of those chains are in Stratford-Upon-Avon, but not as much as W H Smith.) Yes, there exists a town where people still read books. Perhaps I’m showing my age, but I personally think that’s, like, totally awesome. I’m sure that Shakespeare would too.

Actually, he might not care less. He never intended to write books.

Punk rock music; aftermath from The Minivans - photo by Johnny Klemme (johnnyalive).

Forget sex, politics and religion. The most heated discussion topic, I’m almost certain, is rock music. Liberal voters can mix pleasantly with the ALP faithful, Christians can talk to atheists, but rock music fans are not so forgiving of each other. Odd, because they’re supposed to be fans of the same thing.

Their interrogation might start with an innocent question, like “What do you like best: sixties or seventies music?”

It’s usually safest to say “sixties music, of course,” though it’s not so simple. (I’d easily take Blondie over Vanilla Fudge.) But though punk and prog-rock have their adherents, more rock fans will tell you that the sixties were the greatest decade in the history of the universe.

Having passed that hurdle, you now get the next question: “The Beatles or the Stones?”

“The Beatles.” (I couldn’t lie about this, even if the rock fan has one of those “bright red singing lips” T-shirts that that are supposed to invoke Mick Jagger.)

“Lennon or McCartney?” will come next (unless the rock fan is a Stones freak, in which case he’s started explaining to you, loudly and slowly, why Satisfaction is a far greater rock anthem than Revolution, and Keith Richards’ virtuosity leaves George Harrison for dead).

Rock fans tend to deify John Lennon, while scorning Paul McCartney for everything he’s done wrong, from Wings to Give My Regards to Broad Street, from marrying Heather Mills to living beyond 50. Still, I happen to think he’s a mega-genius (as opposed to Lennon, who was merely a demi-genius), so I’d say “McCartney.”

“McCartney, hey?” they say, miraculously revealing that they too are McCartney fans. But just as I think we’ll get along fine, they suddenly come up with the clincher: “Hey Jude or Helter Skelter?”

No contest. “Hey Jude.”

“Hey Jude?” they will say with shock, upset that I would personally insult them with such an odious choice. “Why would you want some sugary, namby-pamby song that’s two-thirds fade-out when you can choose one of the most bold and influential songs ever recorded?”

It’s no use saying “I just don’t much like Helter Skelter” (thereby proving my philistinism). It’s no use reminding him that I’m a fellow rock fan, sixties fan, Beatles fan, even McCartney fan. The rock fan believes that he doesn’t hold opinions, but has the facts at his disposal. So, like a born-again Christian (or indeed, a strong atheist), he has to preach the Word. He will wax lyrical, at length, about why each song of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here or Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is a work of sheer genius. If anyone is kind enough to actually play one of his favourite albums, he’ll provide a running commentary, effectively drowning out the whole thing.

(In the case of the overrated Astral Weeks, this might not be so bad. There, I said it. Please send all arguments, complaint letters and ticking parcels to the web server.)

Since then, I’ve been playing catch-up. In Japan recently, I took some ski lessons. This is an odd place for an Australian to learn to ski. It is usually smarter to have an instructor who can speak English, so they can give you simple instructions like “Skis together”, “Move your weight to the left” and “Watch where you’re going before you hit that tree, you bozo!”

Instead, my translator (yes, I was fortunate enough to have a translator) joined in the lesson, claiming to be a beginner like myself. She proved to be one of those very annoying beginners, who does everything brilliantly while you’re still trying to untangle your skis after walking in them for a few seconds. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that she had already learned to ski, several years ago, but was convinced that (despite working in a ski resort for some time) she’d probably forgotten everything.

“I guess it’s like learning to ride a bike,” I said.

She frowned, not sure what I meant. She could translate from Japanese to English, but when I spoke, she generally had no idea what I was talking about. I shook my head, to say “It doesn’t matter.” She frowned again, even more confused.

We were in the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu. As far as snowfields go, it’s not as famous as Nagano (once the site of the Winter Olympics) or Hokkaido, but it seemed to my inexpert self like an ideal ski region. We were touring the ski resorts of Tohoku, and the first stop was the region’s largest resort, Appi-kogen. We had an English-speaking instructor there, a 19-year-old Welsh student on his gap year, who plans to study journalism. Our lesson became something of an exchange, as he taught me the basic of skiing, and I tried to save him years of heartache by convincing him to study something else. Happily, I stopped yapping long enough to ski down an almost-flat slope without a problem, decided that skiing is dead easy.

By my third lesson (sorry, but I have limited space in this column, so I’ll go straight to my third lesson), we had moved to the challenging slopes of Shiukuishi. We took the chair lift to a much higher and steeper point, where a small snowstorm was brewing. “Follow me,” said the instructor in Japanese.

“Follow me,” translated my translator, in her usual slow, polite tones. I couldn’t help thinking that, helpful as she was, she might not be quick enough if the instructor ever called out “Watch where you’re going before you hit that tree, you bozo!”

We somewhat uneasily followed this brightly-clad figure, the only thing visible in the white mist, as he continued steeply downhill. Mainly because there was no other way out, I was able to conquer my feelings of dread and follow my instructor, even though I hadn’t yet mastered braking, or slowing down. Or wearing skis.

As the snowstorm made flakes of snow cover my ski goggles, rendering everything even less visible than before, I had no way to see in front of me. That’s when I decided on another tactic: falling over. The snow was a thick mattress of powder, unlike the crushed ice of Perisher, and it was a soft landing, with my ski clothes protecting me from the coldness. I couldn’t see in front of me, so when I wasn’t certain where to go (which was most of the time), falling over seemed like the safest option. I did this several times, and the instructor and translator chatting with each other in Japanese, probably assuming that my falls were due to balance rather than preemptive strikes.

When we finally reach the bottom of the hill, after what seemed like hours (but was probably more like five minutes, including considerable falling-down time), I quipped “Too much sake last night,” blaming the local rice wine for my performance.

“You are drunk?” said my translator, with an “oh, that explains everything” gaze. “No, I am joking,” I said. After three days with me, that had become a common phrase, so she understood what I meant.

Of course, the next lesson was better. Now I’m an expert. So there.