The life of a Luthier

Friday night Debs and I took the train out to Bayswater to see our friend Baz in action, making guitars at the Cole Clark factory. I had been looking forward to this for ages, and it didn't disappoint.

Cole Clark guitars are played by the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Ben Harper, Architecture in Helsinki and The Dears, plus some other bands that I don't really like so I won't mention them here.

Baz gave us the red carpet treatment and showed us round the whole operation. He demonstrated his bending press, ran his hands over a Fat Lady's curves, gave an Angel a bit of TLC and even dallied briefly with his latest Mistress.

As you might imagine, the place was absolutely full of wood, with the humidity on the shop floor carefully controlled so none of it started swelling or shriveling at an inopportune moment. And then, of course, there were racks and racks of newborn guitars, serried in ranks like a naked musical army.

The best piece of kit was an amazing Cosmic 6200 5-axis CNC machine - a huge beast with a moving head unit which danced around, swapping cutting bits, shaping and shaving up to 8 guitar necks in a single run. Impressive computer controlled manufacturing process!

After about an hour of breathing in sawdust and perving on the instruments, Baz chauffeured us back to Melbourne in the General Lee.

I would have loved to have picked up an armful of these little beauties to take away with me, but they're slightly beyond my means at the moment... also pretty impractical to carry around when you've got a 15 kilo pack on your back. Plus, I don't really know any songs suitable for playing on an acoustic.

I'll probably just buy myself a new effects pedal when I get home instead. I rather fancy a tremelo.

Ben

Perfume and pain

My feet aren't exactly being my best friends on this trip.

First of all, they absolutely STINK.

Secondly, my left foot has developed some sort of biomechanical problem (translation: every now and then, it really hurts).

You'll recall my delight at my pre-departure purchase of these rather tasty little sandal thingies. Unfortunately, it's all gone a bit wrong. Let me elaborate:

I don't claim to enjoy a life of perfectly perfumed feet. Usually my socked and sneakered paws emit a charming musty smell - a bit like the aroma of a warm bed of straw after a veal calf has taken a short nap on it. But this... ABOMINABLE STENCH is ridiculously embarrassing.

It started a week or so into Mexico, by which time they had already developed a cheeky aroma not entirely dissimilar to salt and vinegar crisps. This has gradually fermented over the past few months into a full blown stinkbomb: think wet dog meets pickled badger. It's enough to bring tears to Debs' eyes: "It's not very nice for me, you know."

My once pristine sandals are now suspiciously blackened and slimy underfoot - this despite frequent. vigorous scrubbing with anti-bacterial soap.

And yes, I do wash my feet. It's just... they're sweating a lot what with all this excitement and heat, and with no socks to absorb it, the shoes (and people in the immediate vicinity) suffer.

The crippling pain in my left foot - a searing agony, shooting around the outer edge and underside of the foot - first occurred the day after our marathon walk up to the Rob Roy glacier in Wanaka, and has recurred sporadically over the past few weeks.

I had an x-ray done in Christchurch, NZ, which revealed nothing in particular, so today I visited my first ever podiatrist. He donned a pair of surgical gloves, assuring me he'd smelt worse, and basically told me there was nothing wrong with my feet bar high arches which tend to push my weight out onto the outer edge of the foot - isn't this fascinating? - and I'd probably just overexerted that bit of the foot on the walk. He told me to get some better shoes, with more padding.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I have a new pair of sneakers/walking boots. 80 Australian Dollars bought me some Nike Takao from the outlet store on Smith Street.

And so today, I consign my malodorous, disabling sandals to the bin, and proceed with my fancy new footwear, all comfortable and pristine. Think I'll buy some socks and spray and stuff to prolong their box fresh aroma as long as possible...

Baz says "I'm like a man with an orthopaedic shoe - I stand corrected". Where does he gettem from, eh?

Ben

Barbershops of the world, part 9

Here we are in Melbourne, on the lookout for fun.

Enter stage right Arthur's Barber Shop, offering the tantalizing prospect of Modern Styles & Shapes, like these:

How could I resist? My face was all bushy, and after 2 hours spent walking down Chapel St, (SW Melbourne), I needed a break before spending 2 hours walking back up it.

I was also very pleased to find an honest, old school barber in Melbourne. Searching the internets and the Yellow Pages had only garnered a discouraging slew of salons offering overpriced "grooming", "treatments", and the like. I'm no ponce! No sir!

Arthur is a man of Greek descent, and few words. Actually, Arthur isn't his real name; I sneaked a look at his Certificate of Hairdressing - which he got in 1963 - and it bore a longer, Greeker name. So, either he was an impostor, or he'd anglicized his name. Stranger things have happened.

Anyhow, he wields his clipper deftly, and the result was generally very satisfactory, although there was a particularly heavy sprinkling of hairy bits all over my face and shoulders at the end.

Cost 7 AUS dollars (about EUR 4)
Cut quality 7/10
Fear factor 0/10

σας ευχαριστούμε Arthur!

Ben

Me!bourne

If current experiences are anything to go by, I don't think we're going to be the type of traveler who returns home all full of spiritual enlightenment/anti-capitalist fervour. We're back in a kick-ass city and - again - we absolutely love it. Took a day to adjust to being surrounded by people walking fast, but now... look at all this amazing stuff!

Melbourne is treating us exceptionally well, apart from one day of torrential rain, and the FLIES which are EVERYWHERE.

Tuesday, we took in the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) on the impressive Federation Square. They're currently featuring a Christian Marclay exhibition. Really nice exhibition space, and full of some really good pieces, e.g. Guitar Drag (readers of a sensitive disposition should turn the volume right down. Noisenicks - boost it up!), the extremely claustrophobic Crossfire (screens on 4 sides of you, all showing shooting guns), and Video Quartet - a surprisingly successful split screen music juxtaposition work.

There was also a Games Lab, featuring a bunch of imaginative interactive funnies, including Samorost 2 - the best online game I've ever played (takes about half a working day to finish, so delegate all your stuff to someone else before you start). All that, all free: Bargain!

We made our way home on Tram 112 via Fitzroy, which is ace. Full of independent shops selling good stuff. I was disappointed to discover that the purple Gravis Tarmac Mids weren't available in my size. Boo!

Still not 100% after Saturday night's monumental bender...

Ben

Crikey!

Christ Sheila, we're in Australia! We've been in Melbourne since Friday, and we love it! We're staying at Baz's house (Deb's friend from uni) on St Georges Road - a stones throw from Fitzroy, the nicest part of Melbourne - and now we've finally recovered from a heavy drinking session that could only be initiated by a man who works 80 hour weeks, we can finally rouse ourselves to write a blog post.

This is how excited we were to have arrived in Australia:

And this is how Baz looked when we first met him again after 5 years (the moustache, which was grown for mo-vember (a charity supporting prostate cancer), was shaved off after this picture):

First off was a few drinks in the Night Cat where we were treated to a bit of funk by some ageing, quite filthy rockers. "The girl in the boob tube - she's got funk", "I like to have sex", "Get on down" etc; then we moved onto a lovely little indie disco called Ding Dong where we met all the people were going to The Meredith Music Festival with, and drank too many Coopers Green beer (Ben and Baz)/ vodka tonics (Debs). Very nice.

All in all, we love it here and it's great to see Baz again.