Well here we are back in the UK OK.
It’s quite a culture shock.
Lot’s of obese people who smoke with a penchant for having gangster like tattoos on the neck.
The crowds come as a shock.
The traffic is intense and tense.One thing that has changed since I was here last is that cars are now taxed annually on their emissions. For cars like the Mercedes Smart car with a small diesel engine the annual road tax is nil. For an ageing petrol driven Nissan Pajero (Spanish for wanker), the annual road tax can be £450.This excludes the cost of insurance.
So, all you carbon tax afficionados, ponder the reality of doing something about the main producer of carbon emissions, motor vehicles. How do you get the polluting old clunkers off the road? Is it political suicide for any party to try this in Australia?
The weather is unseasonably warm. I’m writing this on November 1 and people are still eating and drinking outside.
Beer at £1,63 a pint. Creamy headed nectar with a hoppy flavour that invites just one more,and one more. Widow Cullen’s Well’ (pictured, in Lincoln City) is a pub of some 500 or 600 years vintage. You have to walk over a thick sheet of glass to get to the gent’s toilet.
There is a Roman Well, deep sides illuminated to show the water at the very bottom. The sinks in the bog are next to the urinals and at the same height. I wonder how many blokes who have had a few have pissed in the sink by mistake.
The regulars at the ‘Well’ are a mixed bunch. Hardened drinkers; young men with lovely hairstyles like the pictures in the Barbers, red nosed old men, every one a Falstaff. Hard looking blokes, avoid eye contact. Good food at £4-5 a main plate.
I feel that I am looking at a nation in decline.
The Welfare State is a good horse that has been flogged to near death.
Watch carefully what happens here folks … when the government in Oz runs out of ideas they will seek inspiration from the UK.
TTFN, Phil Lowe … who lived for a number of years in Hobart and often played musical instruments in Salamanca.
