Carolina Liar

It struck me as an odd name for a band, especially one which comes mainly from Scandinavia, but it has begun to make sense, because over the weekend I heard an interview with the American guy from the band who claims that he often gets asked what the song "I'm Not Over" is about.

Here's the chorus:

I'm not over,
I'm not over you just yet.
Can I hide it?
You're not that easy to forget.
I'm not over.

If, as is presumably the case, he made up the thing about being asked that question to make himself sound cool, then I think he should ask for a refund from his writers and PR people. Or better yet, he should change the band name to something he's a little bit less talentless at.

Very Rural Victoria

The Old Ballarat Road (or the Old Melbourne Road, depending which way you're heading) runs due west (or east, depending which way you're heading), which would be grand for stage coaches which don't have rear view mirrors and which aren't travelling at 110kms/h. For me, it proved to be a lesson in the dark side of riding off into the sunset (and hoping there would be no cars coming out of it, after having discovered that the sunset wasn't all it might be.) I'd never driven that freeway before so I spent the whole time in a state of anxiety about where I needed to turn off. Under those conditions and in the glaring sun, it seemed to go for ever. When I finally pulled over in somewhere that could well have been Ballan, I was a zombie. I walked into the nearest building, I'm still not totally sure what it was because my eyes wouldn't' adjust to the light difference. Even once I worked out that I was still wearing sunnies.

Insufficiently rested, I was back on the road like Jack Kerouac except less gay, or like Ned Kelly without the beard and radical political agenda. The last FM radio station to give out as I drove into the sunset was MMM. They were having an 80s weekend playing the countdown charts from each year of the decade. We were up to #4 of 1987 when it too finally dissolved into static and I was forced to turn over to Radio National, who were airing a program made in the 1950s about Billy Hughes, one of those ones where people tell stories like this in old fashioned Australian accents:

"Rosie had only been with us I suppose about a fortnight when she got it into her head than Billy wasn't eating enough. So she determined to set it right, you see. Next morning she took him his breakfast tray as usual with tea and toast, and two boiled eggs as well you see, and gave it to him. And he said 'I don't eat eggs' and Rosie said 'you'll eat these' and she sat down next to him on the bed. So he drank his tea and ate his toast and then ate the eggs as well. And ever after anything that Rosie said he did without a murmur. He used to say to me, 'that Rosie, she's a wonderful woman.' When she got married he said 'Just like women, never give a thought to anyone else's convenience' but he was still best man, I believe. He always did well by Rosie."

It was a truely surreal experience.