When you finish looking at the gig guide bit take a scroll down to the bottom of the page. While I don’t mind if nobody looks - as I generally add a little bit of rot down there for my own amusement - it might give you smile. If it doesn’t you can go fuk yourself.

Now… this week in the Blue Ring Gig Guide we have… Saturday Night, October 15 pan!c at the Dan. Yes the mighty little pop trio is rocking the Daniel O’Connell Hotel in North Adelaide. Be there for a 9 Pm kick off. Midnight round up.

Saturday Night October 15 also sees the Steve Brown Band at the Bacchus Bar. That too, is a 9 pm kick-off and a 12.30 winding down of hostilities. Must get a new photo of Brownie; that one is looking a bit frayed around the edges.

Sunday October 16 and you can take your choice of an afternoon session in church or a knees up at the Gilbert Street Hotel with Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers. I know what I would choose but I have to go to the Gilbert to do the PA. The fun starts at 2 pm. Winds up around 5 and you can stagger home with a warm glow and fall asleep in front of the tv, watching masterchef or some equally deadly prog.

The Whitmore Gigs for the week:  Friday October 14:  Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors;

Saturday October 15: Gatloney Rats;

Sunday October 16: The Blokes.

Also…..Wednesday, October 26 SECRET SHOW – BACKWATER BLUES FESTIVAL – Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers at theWhitmore Hotel

The Wheaty:  Friday 14 and Saturday 15 October: Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist (eeeeuuuuww);

Sunday Oct 16:  Sun Thoery CD Launch;

Monday Oct 17:   C.O.M.A. Spring Sessions;

Wednesday  Oct 19: Tim Chaisson and Rin & the Reckless.

Plus  a Bit More:    I have been visiting the gypsies at the back of the pub again; trying to unravel more of my past lives in the vain hope that somewhere back there I was a person of higher standing than the piss-bucket carrier for the scrotum lifter for a high-stool seated bean counter in an early 1800’s black-pudding factory.

I discovered that a fat fistful of generations ago I was a camel taxi driver in ancient Persia. And I was pretty good at it, being able to talk through the back of my neck to the passengers on the camel’s hump.

Being, as always, in the vanguard of the business of innovation – I have noticed that all the past generations of me have always been ‘ideas people’. It is remarkable that, in our respective times, we have always considered ourselves humble geniuses with our innovative thinking while both the inner and outer circle of friends and acquaintances of the time regarded me as a fukwit. And obstacles, yea and verily I aver that snares were woven for my feet as I tried to bring innovation and progress to a society with the average I.Q. of a shoe scraper outside a pigsty.  Why is life so cruel....? (Rhetorical question to be asked in voice of Kamahl.)

“Because you’re a fukwit....” answers the chorus in the voice of the people.

Where was I???? Ah, yes… about how fukken smart I was….. Being in the guards’ van…. er, vanguard, of the camel taxi business, mine was a ‘luxury’ limo cab; I only carted Caliphs and Sultans and the like. I’d fitted the hump with a bundle of soft cushions and bolsters, there was a papyrus scroll library basket provided for in-transit entertainment, little vine-leaf packets of complimentary dates and pomegranate seeds and an amphora of wine. The wine, though being a cracker of a marketing pitch, brought its own drawbacks. It tended to reach boiling point in the desert sun and was usually a pretty heady brew by the time the son or daughter of a Caliph or a Sultan had a pull at it. Consequentially I was often in the Camel Wash cleaning up the fukken vomit and piss. I always added a surcharge of a peck of shekels to cover that eventuality.

Despite these brilliant innovations it was not much of a money-spinner carting only one Caliph at a time.  I had my eye on a holiday hovel near the sewerage farm on the edge of the Critically Ill Sea – it wasn’t quite Dead back then but was feeling pretty crook -  and I wasn’t going to get my mitts on it carting one Caliph at a time.  It was obvious that I needed to double my passenger capacity so I fitted a bolster to each side of the hump and set out to make my fortune in one evening. It was shortly equally obvious that more thought was needed.

I’d been hanging around a night-taverna and spotted to fat Caliphs wobbling along, half molo, looking like they needed a lift and having their pockets lightened at the same time.  I made my pitch and after much difficulty slung each of them on a bolster and we set of for a kebab joint. I’d kicked the camel in the guts and we were travelling at thirty eight pedestals per stadia when we hit the S-bends out near the camel dairy and over we went… Caliphs and camel all over the joint. A tax-collector was quick to attend the prang and I got done for overloading. While I was arguing with the copper the two fat caliphs staggered off without paying.

I then realised that I needed to carry two or more paying passengers in ‘relative comfort and safety’ to double my dough. After applying my mighty brain I invented the first stretch limousine on the Persian Peninsula.   It sounded tricky, having only camels to work, with but no difficulty is an obstacle to an inventive mind. I merely bought a two-humped beast and put the fukker on the rack. When I took him off three weeks later the gap between humps was about 6 sandals (1.9 metres in the new measures). I could easily double my passenger load and give two passengers plenty of leg room.  The leg room – it turns out - was a bit too ambitious.

I was careful not to overload the bastard this time and I searched around for a couple of lightweight passengers, eventually eyeballing two Sultanas – young Sultans, that is – coming out of a henna tattoo parlour. They went ape at the idea of a stretch camel limo – a cameline, I called it - and we hit the sand track. However, 15 stadia out on the road to Damascus we went tits up; got the opposite ends of the camel up on separate sand dunes when the little fukkers  – getting legless on hot wine – started doing a sabre dance in the middle of the cab and snapped the camels back. We spilled all over the joint and wrapped around a date palm. The cameline was a write off but the worst part of it was again being done by the copper, this time for exceeding the designated length of a four-legged vehicle.

Reeling from the mounting expenses I was spurred to greater deliberations and saw the answer immediately. And it was a solution that allowed a greater flexibility for expansion. Starting with two camels, I merely shoved the head of one camel up the arse of the other and hey-presto... I can take two passengers, no worries. Plenty of legroom and no overloading problems.  And no steering issues as the camel behind only has to follow the one in front; it doesn’t have to see where it’s going. Shove the head of another camel up the arse of the second and I can carry three passengers. I could already smell the waft from the sewerage pond by my soon-to-be-mine holiday hovel.

Fully loaded with a fat Caliph and his equally chubby two sons – probably a pair of Calipers - we were trukkin' along the Old Silk Road to Farrah Fausett when I heard the fukken cop siren behind me and saw the flashing red and blue oil lamps in my rear-view beaten brass dish.

I pulled over and snarled “Wot the fuk is it this time, you dung-beetle excreta?” and smartly got done for not being licensed to drive an articulated vehicle.

Fuk it.

Now… if you liked it or hated it but only discovered it for the first time, feel free to track back over recent posts to read some of the others. Or not.