HQ for a major public space

The soon-to-be-completed HQ is set to become Fortitude Valley’s new major public event space following an agreement between joint venture developers Leighton Properties and Leighton Contractors, and the Valley Chamber of Commerce (VCC) this week.
Located on the corner of Wickham and Brookes streets (across from Emporium), HQ will comprise two world-class office towers, boutique shops, restaurants, wine bars and a 2,500 square metre central public plaza.
The partnership will allow the the Valley chamber to use HQ’s expansive central plaza for public events. As a part of the agreement Leighton Properties and Leighton Contractors will also donate 70 square metres of premium retail space within HQ for the VCC to operate from rent free for nine years. The VCC partnership with Leighton Properties at HQ was announced onsite on Wednesday March 17.

Crafty buyer secures the block lot

PROPERTY

A Queensland buyer has snapped up four luxury townhouses in a mortgagee sale handled by PRDnationwide New Farm. The Brisbane investor paid almost $6 million cash for the properties at 69 Kingsholme Street, New Farm, on Brisbane’s inner north.
Nick McGuire, director of PRDnationwide New Farm, said while the four townhouses were offered for sale separately, the buyer was eager to secure all four. “The developer had the properties on the market for one year through another agency who didn’t make a sale,” he said.
“The developer’s bank took possession and appointed me to sell the properties.” After 150 inspections, five auctions, 20 registered bidders, and 15 contracts the buyer was successful.
“The buyer wanted all four properties so he could control the body corporate and make repairs and alterations to the properties. The four town homes will provide a good passing income and represent a strategic piece of land for future capital growth,” he said. Mr McGuire said the dominant buying groups were Generation X and Baby Boomers.
“We undertook a thorough marketing campaign over four weeks and had in excess of 150 qualified buyers through the properties,” he said.
“We received 14 cash contracts prior to auction and had competitive bidding for all five auctions on the day.” The properties were passed in at auction but sold one week after. Jason Andrews, director of freelance auctioneering firm Jason Andrews Auctioneers, conducted the auctions.
“There was a room full of people with plenty of registered bidders very excited by these properties,” he said.
“There is huge interest in mortgagee sales as people are looking for a good buy and they always draw out a crowd,” he said. The townhouses range in size from 254sq m up to a massive 510sq m spread over three or four bedrooms. They all feature roof terraces, city views and pools.
"The result was the cause of the pressure put on all buyers by the exhaustive marketing campaign and intense public display of activity,” Mr McGuire said.
“Everyone who wanted to buy had to deal, because they could all see the competition. It was a terrific result for all parties.”

Crafty buyer secures the block lot

PROPERTY

A Queensland buyer has snapped up four luxury townhouses in a mortgagee sale handled by PRDnationwide New Farm. The Brisbane investor paid almost $6 million cash for the properties at 69 Kingsholme Street, New Farm, on Brisbane’s inner north.
Nick McGuire, director of PRDnationwide New Farm, said while the four townhouses were offered for sale separately, the buyer was eager to secure all four. “The developer had the properties on the market for one year through another agency who didn’t make a sale,” he said.
“The developer’s bank took possession and appointed me to sell the properties.” After 150 inspections, five auctions, 20 registered bidders, and 15 contracts the buyer was successful.
“The buyer wanted all four properties so he could control the body corporate and make repairs and alterations to the properties. The four town homes will provide a good passing income and represent a strategic piece of land for future capital growth,” he said. Mr McGuire said the dominant buying groups were Generation X and Baby Boomers.
“We undertook a thorough marketing campaign over four weeks and had in excess of 150 qualified buyers through the properties,” he said.
“We received 14 cash contracts prior to auction and had competitive bidding for all five auctions on the day.” The properties were passed in at auction but sold one week after. Jason Andrews, director of freelance auctioneering firm Jason Andrews Auctioneers, conducted the auctions.
“There was a room full of people with plenty of registered bidders very excited by these properties,” he said.
“There is huge interest in mortgagee sales as people are looking for a good buy and they always draw out a crowd,” he said. The townhouses range in size from 254sq up to a massive 510sq m spread over three or four bedrooms. They all feature roof terraces, city views and pools.
"The result was the cause of the pressure put on all buyers by the exhaustive marketing campaign and intense public display of activity,” Mr McGuire said.
“Everyone who wanted to buy had to deal, because they could all see the competition. It was a terrific result for all parties.”

Unit and townhouse sales soften

PROPERTY

Continuing a trend in Queensland’s residential property market, the number of sales of units and townhouses reduced markedly during the tail end of 2009, according to the latest research from the Real Estate Institute of Queensland.
The REIQ research report, Queensland Market Monitor (QMM), has found the number of preliminary sales of units and townhouses fell 24 per cent between the September and December quarters last year. The number of sales under $500,000 was also down 28 per cent over the period.
REIQ managing director Dan Molloy said the drastic reduction in sales – especially in the affordable price range – mirrored the retreat of first home buyers from the market. “Unit and townhouses are popular with first-time buyers as they provide a less expensive way into the property market, especially in south-east Queensland,” he said.
“However, first home buyers have now fallen to lows not seen since the high interest rate environment of mid 2008 which means demand for this segment of the market has lessened.”
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics housing finance figures show that lending for all Queensland buyers fell dramatically in January to be down some 20 per cent on the year before.
“The recent batch of interest rate rises, even though inflation appears to presently be under control, is obviously having an impact on the Queensland market with sales numbers well below what they were during the global financial crisis last year,” Mr Molloy said.
Across the state, the December quarter median unit and townhouse prices edged upwards as sales in the affordable end of the market softened.

• Queensland Market Monitor is a 36-page quarterly, electronic publication entirely focused on residential sales and rental research data for regions throughout the state, on a suburb-by-suburb basis and is available via www.reiq.com.au.

The dangers of giving birth to a hastily thought-up plan

POLITICS .... with Mungo MacCallum

For once you have to sympathise with Tony Abbott. His parental leave policy may be a disaster, but if so it is not for the reasons being trumpeted by the government and the media.
In spite of what his apologists are now claiming, there is no doubt that its unveiling was both rushed and rash. Abbott may have spent some months reconsidering his old “over-my-dead-body” stance on paid maternity leave, but there is no sign that he took more than a few micro-seconds working out the details of his new one. This explains his remark about it being easier to apologise to his party room after the announcement rather than asking its permission beforehand. Had he done so, it is hardly likely that it would have emerged in its present amorphous form.
The idea of six months leave on full pay for everyone is appealing in its simplicity, but it hardly adds up.
Giving the cleaners $600 a week to have their babies while the executives get $3000 a week seems, at the very least, a trifle unfair. Abbott obviously subscribes to the view articulated by a correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald back in 2004: "The rich need more money than the poor because they have greater expenses."
But considerations of equity aside, the scheme is vastly more generous than the government's, and more than ten times as expensive and the money has to come from somewhere. Abbott proposes a levy of 1.7 percent on companies that earn more than $5 million a year - or perhaps that turn over more than $5 million a year, or perhaps that pay tax on more than $5 million a year, or perhaps that pay more than $5 million a year in tax, no one seems entirely sure.
The levy would be, we think, on the total taxable income of the companies, but again we are not quite sure. What we do know is that only the 3200 biggest companies in the country would be affected, and that they can all afford it. If not, they could always try putting a levy of their own on the salaries of the CEOs and directors – about 75 per cent might be appropriate.
The companies are kicking of course; even Peter Anderson, the die-in-a-ditch Liberal Chief Executive of Abbott’s normally rusted-on support base, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said the policy didn’t make sense and Heather Ridout of the more moderate Australian Industries Group said she couldn’t believe Abbott was serious: the priority should be to lower company tax, not raise it.
And when not only the feminist groups but the Greens came out in support of Abbott, the economists crowed that this proved the idea was totally crazy: fairies in the bottom of the garden stuff aimed at undermining our prosperity and destroying our way of life.
But this criticism was mere distraction from the big problem, which is that Abbott, as opposition leader, is proposing a Big New Tax. This breaks the first rule of opposition: never, never admit that you might increase taxes in any way, let alone introduce a new one.
Even in government it’s a huge risk, as John Howard found out with the GST; in 1998, after a gigantic campaign funded by all the resources the taxpayers could provide, Howard barely scraped back with less than half of the popular vote. In Opposition it’s suicide: just ask John Hewson, or for that matter Mark Latham, who in 2004 refused to play the tabloids’ silly game and guarantee no tax increases.
There are times when good policy cannot be delivered without tax increases, even a new tax: if Kevin Rudd is serious about reforming the health and hospitals net work to the standards the media are demanding, taxpayers – or some of them – will have to foot the bill. But you can bet he won’t spell this out in an election year. He is not that crazy-brave.
There is much to criticise in Abbott’s policies and this column will continue to did so. But right now he is being pilloried not for a matter of substance, but for having the courage to defy one of Australia’s more mindless political shibboleths. Like I said, you have to sympathise.

***

But save your real applause for the Indonesian President Susilo Bambam Yudhoyono whose visit to Australia last week was a long overdue breakthrough.
SBY, as he likes to be known, was serious, frank and supremely constructive. And he identified the biggest problem between his country and ours: not the governments, but the people, who remain mutually suspicious and still feel vaguely threatened by each other.
I can relate to this; only a few years ago I regarded Indonesia as a sort of post-colonial Javanese empire, dominated by doctrinaire Moslems and tenuously held together by a corrupt and expansionist military, an international loose cannon which could only be treated as potentially hostile to Australian interests.
But in an astonishingly short time it has all changed: Indonesia is now emerging as a fully-fledged secular democracy, increasingly prosperous and confident of its place in the world, an unambiguously good neighbour.
There is still work to be done but SBY, building on the foundation laid by the brilliant, if eccentric, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), has helped to transform not just his country, but the entire region, for the better. The politicians on both sides accept and welcome this, but the public in general has not caught up: a recent survey showed 54 per cent of Australians still regard Indonesia as irresponsible in international relations, and we can assume the sentiment is returned in the archipelago. This outdated view must be corrected.
Educational and cultural exchanges and even tourism will help, but the most important step is to restore the teaching of Asian languages, and particularly Indonesian, in Australian schools and institutions. The program was thriving until it was inexplicably terminated under John Howard. Kevin Rudd has promised to reinstate it; SBY’s visit should encourage him to start doing so at once.

Bean there, done that

You might possibly think that there are two things that the central Fortitude Valley area doesn’t need any more of – and that’s coffee outlets and certainly no more convenience stores.
But they keep coming – and seem to thrive – which just goes to show that this silly old fossil knows diddly-squat about what makes a good business decision. But seeing these places keep opening– and supposedly thriving in the process – could I be just a little indulgent for once and give a shameless plug to a new venue being run by two very close friends of mine.
I was going to say “old” friends, but as you can see from the photos, Annette Gillespie (that’s her on the left in both photos) and Christina Hatzepetrou are far too young and sweet to deserve that moniker.
To me, they’re like the granddaughters I never had, so I’m delighted to mention their new little venue, Flamingo, in a little laneway behind the Zoo musical establishment on Ann Street.
To my mind, the venue seems so very Melbournian in style and look, with arty-farty (if you’ll excuse the French) fittings and not much more than a “hole in the wall” feel to it.

It’s going to be interesting to see if these sweet young things can make a go of it, seeing Flamingo is a little away from the main mall traffic flow. But they should do okay, for it’s not as if they are new to the hospitality scene.
Christina used to run The Main Squeeze in nearby Brunswick Street, and I did enjoy a mango/eggplant smoothie there on many occasions. Proud newish mother Annette also has a lot of barista work under her belt. She was a popular staffer at Fat Boys for quite a while – long enough to feature on our front page celebrating one of our birthday editions – and she was a co-owner of the Cantina at West End. So please go and say hello. Tell them Ivor sent you!


Blues goes off with a bang ... without Asa

Now that the 18th annual Brisbane Blues Festival at the Jubilee Hotel last weekend is just a fading memory of a hangover, spare a thought for one of the event’s main acts, Asa Broomhall.
The gig’s owner Rob Hudson tells me that while the rest of the bands on the bill tried to out do one another with the number of hot sweaty bodies they could coax onto the dance floor, poor Asa was at home under doctor’s orders and on serious meds trying to tame a raging throat and chest infection.
“He was the first act to miss their set in the event’s entire eighteen-year history but all was not lost,” Rob explained. “Asa being the stand up guy that he is had already sent in a ringer to take his place, a band called The Delta Monarchs and they duly keep the punters happy and busy shaking their hips.
“Doug Wilshire (pictured below) tried out tracks from his brand new album Cuz Of You to a great response and Mojo Webb was on fire and had a large segment of the female population up on stage with him helping to push the music to new heights.”
Rob also reports that elsewhere Doc Span and Ross Williams filled the Jube with an amazingly full sound considering they performed as only a duo, Jimi Beavis and the 385s had the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands and The Hipshooters brought the night to a rousing close.
“The weather gods were kind almost the entire night and the heavens didn’t really open up until most people were on their way home.
“It seems the blues are still alive and a post gig phone call confirmed that the unfortunate Asa was still with us as well.
“Next year I’m making sure he stops kissing babies and shaking hands at least three weeks before the festival.”

A well-deserved arrogance

WINE ... with David Bray

Like the name, like the bottle, love the cheeky approach. Talking about The Arrogant Frog, a wine with so much appeal I have even bought it from time to time. They say it has been on sale here for six years and is doing nicely, thank you.
There's an invitation to lunch on March 24 “to celebrate 10 years of Australia’s most popular French table wine”. Something astray here: we learn that M. Jean-Claude Mas took ownership and control of the family business (est.1892) in 1999. Then “he launched the Arrogant Frog label in 2004 and over the six years, it has became one of the best-selling French wines overseas”.
He is, the press stuff tells us, “a leading exporter of French wine with one-million cases exported in 2009”.
People love the concept of these easy drinking, new-world wine from the south of France, but the quirky label featuring an arrogant frog, has more than a bit to do with the success of the launch.
They aren’t great wines, mind you, but good ones – mostly delicious and nicely priced around $11. It is a good story. A fourth-generation winemaker, M. Mas was born in what is said to be the biggest vine-growing area in the world, Languedoc. The story goes that at three years of age, during vintage, Jean-Claude ran away from his mother and walked 1.5 miles to the winery where his grandfather Raymond and father Paul were fermenting wine. And that was the start of something big.
At university he studied economics, graduated then went car and motorcycle racing for three years. In 1992, a chance meeting with one of the leading Italian winemakers, Giorgio Grai, re-established Jean-Claude's interest in wine and taught him the art of blending and creating 'wine with style'.
It was in the mid 90s, while he was a director of Domaines Virginie, a large winery in the south of France renowned for its varietal wines, that Jean-Claude decided it was time to return home to the family estate and start producing wines under his family name. Today, with a team of six winemakers and viticulturists, he runs his 120-hectare property in the Pézenas Montagnac area and a 70-hectare property in Limoux. He also sources grapes from another 450 hectares of contracted vineyards located in Limoux, Minervois, Cabardes and Coteaux du Languedoc regions in the south of France.
“The vineyard is where inspiration starts; it is where you start to draw in your mind a rough picture of the character and the personality of the wine that will be the fruit of 12 months’ work,” he says. J
ean-Claude has also been recognised as a French business leader receiving the Grand Prix de l'Entrepreneur award in 2006. In 2008, lading magazine L'Express named him in the 'New wave of French wine: 30 winemakers of tomorrow".
Along with his wife and two daughters, Jean-Claude Mas lives in a castle in Pezenas and still likes racing fast cars. The Arrogant Frog wines are made at the Mas winery Domaine Nicole, Montagnac. The Ribet White is sauvignon blanc from grapes grown near Carcassonne.
Tasters find "a brilliant twist of lemony acidity'' and in the Ribet Red a cabernet merlot blend, a mix of red and blackcurrant'.

***
Still on matters French, we come to a university course in wine tasting. You may think there is very little need indeed for such a project, but it has been seriously proposed in France.
Yep, a government-commissioned report is advising French university canteens to hold wine-tasting sessions to educate the young in the virtues of moderate consumption. The Guardian quotes Jean-Pierre Coffe, a television presenter and celebrated gastronome who co-wrote the study, as advocating that universities should give young people an education in wine as well as in academia.
“Why is there sexual education and not viticultural education? You can learn wine too,” he told French radio. He believes students can be taught the joys of drinking with restraint. “Drinking is not drinking a bottle. Wine is pleasure. It’s like love. It’s the same.”
There is plenty about and M. Coffee on line though you need respectable French to get the full benefit of his thinking. The report was commissioned by Valérie Pécresse, the minister for higher education. It offers a range of recommendations on how to improve student drinking, but the proposal outlining "initiation to a moderate consumption of wine" has attracted most attention.
Jean-Robert Pitte, a former director of Paris's Sorbonne, believes lunchtime canteen tastings would provide the perfect opportunity for students to learn to drink sensibly.
“In order to avoid the total freak-out that happens every Friday night and Saturday night, we want to try to teach students a sense of responsibility, to allow them to taste wine in very moderate quantities, and to show them that it is both a pleasure, good for their health and a part of their national heritage.”
But the proposal, which comes as France faces the fact that its young people are sometimes overdoing the drink bit, has gone down less well elsewhere. Alain Rigaud, president of the national association for the prevention of alcoholism and addiction, reckons “it’s naive to think we're going to reduce binge drinking in this way”. He sees the proposal as marketing for the wine industry.
In November, the Paris city hall launched an awareness campaign aimed at the capital's 15-25-year-olds, warning of the dangers of "le binge drinking".
The Guardian reports that experts believe such heavy and rapid drinking, unfamiliar in a country that has relied on watered-down wine being given to children as an introduction, increased by about 10% between 2005 and 2008.
According to the Paris authorities, a fifth of 17-year-olds now drink at least five glasses of wine in a single sitting at least three times a month.

Damon in zone again

FILM .... with Tim Milfull


Green Zone (M)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Stars: Matt Damon
Rating: 4/5 9115-minutes, now screening

Even before Matt Damon came along, director Paul Greengrass was making taut thrillers like the IRA tragedy, Bloody Sunday. His partnership with the young actor seems to be paying off in spades, with another Bourne flick, the superbly wrought 9/11 drama featuring mainly unknown actors, United 93, and now another Damon outing, albeit with slightly less fisticuffs, and a whole lot more subterfuge.
The title – Green Zone – refers to the little oasis of peace that for many years offered sanctuary for Iraqi mandarins and expats sent to Baghdad to bring democracy to the former dictatorship. Here, soldiers, contractors, government hacks and spies alike could escape from the high probability of death, injury or escape that loomed outside the fences in Iraq-proper.
Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller heads a team charged with locating the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction, and by mid-2003 is going slightly loopy on one ridiculous goose-chase after another, all the while assured by government flacks that their intelligence is bullet-proof.
When a chance encounter raises the possibility of apprehending one of Saddam Hussein’s generals, Miller is convinced that the truth behind the WMDs or lack thereof is within reach. Working with the weary CIA spook, Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), Miller dodges red herrings thrown by the duplicitous government advisor, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), and gradually treads closer to an answer that he might not be able to cope with.
Greengrass and scriptwriter Brian Helgeland use Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone as their compelling template, and the result is an exhausting thriller, constantly ratcheting up the tension.



Monsters made for 3D

How to Train Your Dragon (PG)
Director: Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders
Stars: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler and others
Rating: 4/5 109-minutes, screening from March 25

If the main non-human character in the latest 3D adventure – How to Train Your Dragon – looks vaguely familiar, it’s probably because ‘Toothless’ has similar features to another mythical and mysterious creature: the Stitch in Lilo and Stitch.
Directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders created both monsters from stories they had also written. But their new film has characters that make Stitch look simply primitive by comparison. The medieval world in which the hapless Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) lives is a harsh, wondrous coastline regularly terrorised by dragons of all shapes and sizes.
Surviving in such an environment means adapting, and the Vikings – led by the humongous Stoick (Gerard Butler) – have made an art-form of protecting their turf and bulking up for battle. But Stoick’s son, Hiccup is the kind of weedy, super-geek disappointment that will never amount to anything, and would certainly never qualify for dragon-fighter training.
When a test-firing of his latest wacky invention brings down a never before seen Night Fury, Hiccup thinks that his ticket to legitimacy has finally arrived. But as he builds a grudging relationship with this strange creature, Hiccup realises that the time-honoured hatred between his people and the dragons has very shaky foundations.
I’m not one to fuss over 3D – Avatar was pretty cool, really, but other animated 3D features like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs end up being a tired novelty – this new film, however, is simply extraordinary. The humans might be exaggerated in their proportions, and the dragons wild and sometimes ridiculous, but DeBlois and Sanders delight in the finer details, with How to Train Your Dragon evolving into a rich and rewarding fairytale.

THE BINGE




Heartfelt view on climate change

The Burning Season (M)
Prime Mover (M)
Genova (M)
Public Enemy #1 (MA15+)
All now available through Madman Entertainment

The Burning Season has been a labour of love for a number of years now. Known for her extremely personal documentaries – like The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face and Losing Layla – one of Australia’s most successful documentary producer-directors, Cathy Henkel again wanted to make a difference, this time in the climate change debate.
The result is a tense examination of the effect deforestation has on local and global scales, from the political corruption and life-changing influences on subsistence farmers and the resulting near extinction of orang-utans, to the innovative solutions offered in carbon trading. Moving to the magic-realism of life on the road outside Dubbo, David Caesar – Mullet and Idiot Box – reunites Suburban Mayhem stars, Michael Dorman and Emily Barclay in Prime Mover, a bittersweet love story that replaces gypsy wagons with semi-trailers. And on to more continental fare, ever avoiding categories, British writer-director, Michael Winterbottom transplants a grieving young family to Genova to lick their wounds. While not quite as satisfying as his other exciting work, Genova proves the English filmmaker is prepared to take risks.
The same could be said of the versatile French actor Vincent Cassell who started in local independent productions like La Haine, moved on to big budget Bond and Ocean’s movies, and now, in Public Enemy #1 brings to the screen the story of one of France’s most notorious real-life criminals: Mesrine – a violent, psychopathic gangster who terrorised his homeland.

Watching the public service inaction

FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick

It’s no mystery to me that the state government’s reputation is so low among voters. A colleague recently offered me an insight into the offhanded attitude government departments take to the people they are supposed to serve.
He lives in an area that has been under study for some possible changes in traffic flows, road widths, and car parking. He contacted the Main Roads Department’s badly named consultation team by email at the end of January to discuss the proposals.
He waited for a response that still hasn’t arrived. But in the meantime, after 15 working days without even an acknowledgement, he thought he would drop a line to the director-general of the department to alert him to the lack of responsiveness among his underlings. That was in late February, also more than 15 working days ago. Maybe the director-general and all his staff should grab a dictionary and look up the words “public” and “service”.

***

Are you, like me, in a state of excitement about the imminent opening of the new Clem 7 tunnel?
The stepped-up advertising campaign on TV telling us to buy a new toll tag for our dashboards also tells us that the new tunnel will take millions of cars each hour, allowing them to miss something like 457 sets of traffic lights, and enabling them to go from the Gabba to Bowen Hills in less than 14 seconds.
I may have misheard some of the statistics. Nevertheless, as one with routes all over town including between those two points, it will be a great relief when the Clem 7 takes its first vehicles. All those cars being funnelled underground and off our roads should really clear the way for motorists like me who plan to continue using the old roads. I just can’t wait.
***

Speaking of my routes, last week a social engagement took me to Mitchelton during the past-work rush hour. Trundling outbound along Waterworks Road from Red Hill in my trusty Land Rover, it was quite noticeable how many drivers abuse the rules of the peak-hour T2 lane.
The lane is meant to be reserved in certain hours for people with at least two people in a vehicle. Yet while my lane was making slow but steady progress, cars were zipping by in the T2 lane to my left. A quick and unscientific count revealed about three in every five vehicles using the T2 lane had only a driver inside.
***

This column was not going to make mention of Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle, but scanning other media in the past week it seems there must be some sort of law mandating coverage of the two. So now I have no fear of arrest.

Mad Rush to see the sights of Rome

OVERSEAS TRAVAILS


By Don Gordon-Brown

For most of my life, I’ve only ever been to places that always close down – from Shorncliffe to Ipswich and old Brisbane town. So it’s fair to say that I was literally gobsmacked by the sights that enthralled me on my very first scheduled afternoon in ancient Rome.
I just couldn’t believe that I was seeing, for the very first time, the famous Trevi Fountain, below right. And I just had to give my camera to my travelling partner who took the photo, top right, of me standing at the top of the historic Spanish Steps.
And to snap away at the centuries-old facades of the city’s historic heart... okay, okay, enough!
Some of the more widely travelled among you who have actually been to places that never close down might have sussed out already that the photos at right are not of the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps. They are, in fact, pictures of a backyard pump and some beachside steps taken at a quaint little seaside village a 32 Euro taxi trip from Dublin Airport.
Let me explain how this happened, because I want your input later as to who has to shoulder the blame for my being in rustic Rush, and not romantic Rome.
It started out okay, taking a flight from JFK Airport in New York after my Ho and I had spend eight days in the hood with my Harlem rappers, gangsta and numba runner nigga mates. But that’s another story for another day.
We were en route with Aer Lingus to the Italian capital, and had to change planes in Dublin early the next morning to start an Intrepid tour of central and northern Italy.
We were fashionably late into Dublin; even more so after the terminal walkway to our new departure gate appeared to get there by the Ring of Kerry. Our luggage had been forwarded, so we made good time to get to the gate the same day, only to look up at the departures board to see our flight to Rome was DELAYED. Now please remember what I just said there. DELAYED!.
Not BOARDING. Not FINAL CALL. Not CLOSED, which is international terminal language for YOU’D BETTER START RUNNING AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
No, the board said DELAYED, so we stopped in our tracks and I said to my girlie: “Why the rush? Let’s have a cup of coffee.”
We steered our way into an adjacent cafe, found a seat where we could see the departure board, and waited patiently while the cafe staff forgot our order. My partner refreshed their Irish memory to get things under way.
After enjoying our cup of coffee, and hearing nothing over the PA, we decided it might be best to go to the gate and see what was happening.
We found the gate and milled about with all these other passengers who seemed to know what they were doing – and more importantly, where they were headed. Soon after, the PA announced that a certain flight to somewhere exotic – but definitely not Rome – had changed gates. All the people around us changed gaits and left us alone.
Something is wrong here, we thought, an idea compounded by the fact that on the departure board, our flight to Rome had just changed to DEPARTED. Not TYRES BEING PUMPED UP or WINDSCREEN BEING CLEANED. Just DEPARTED!
We could be in trouble here, I told my babe.
We ran back up to the main terminal level, where some cute Aer Lingus staffers told us our plane had in fact DEPARTED, and where the bloody hell had we been because our names had been called out for ever and ever and the only reason the flight had been DELAYED was because we had been delaying it.
Well, they didn’t say bloody hell but they did make it clear that their schedules had gone to putty because it has taken forever to find and remove our luggage in the hold. They subsequently lost half of it for a week by sending it inexplicably on to Germany but the discomfit that caused is also a story for another day.
What’s worse, they didn’t believe one word of our defence that at no time had we ever heard our names being called. I mean, really! Is there anywhere in Europe where people wouldn’t stop and take notice if they heard the British Prime Minister’s name being called repeatedly, seeing he’s so much on the nose? Exactly. But come to think of it, we hadn’t heard any announcements in the cafe at all.
We finally made our way back to Check-In – ever tried to exit a departure lounge the wrong way?– and the sweet young colleen there made us feel very foolish before finally finding two seats on the next morning’s flight.
No major harm done, we thought. We’ll miss the first day in Rome, but we’ll stay at an airport hotel or in the city overnight and cut our losses. Wrong! The sweet young thing at the tourism counter couldn’t find us a room in any of the airport hotels, or anywhere in Dublin itself. She tried a few nearby towns and just as she was about to start on the suburbs of Belfast, she found a cute little B&B at the aforementioned Rush. Nice little town but without quite the history or allure of Roma, of which we got to see a suburban train station for about one minute the following afternoon.
So who caused this debacle that had left us without a single, unforgettable moment from one of the great world cities? Was the DELAYED sign a cunning Aer Lingus plot to keep this paper’s junior travel reporter in Ireland for an extra and rather expensive night?
Or was he just a hopeless and inexperienced tourist who couldn’t cope with the vagaries of wearying world travel. Just unable to read the signs!
I’d like your input. If you agree with me that the sign that said DELAYED was not only contrary to internationally accepted airport terminal nomenclature, but totally and very unreasonably misleading, where it was only human nature for anybody with even half a brain to think they had heaps of time to catch the flight, then email me RIGHT NOW to: theygotitterriblywrong@theindependent.com.au, and I’ll add it to the legal portfolio for when we make our claim for full restitution from Aer Lingus. Personally, I’m looking at an all-expensed paid, pointy-end-of-the-plane trip back to Rome for both myself and my Ho/Girlie/Babe.
If you think I stuffed up big time, then email: morningprayersinfo@revolutionarycouncil.gov.iran.

Footnote: We made sure we were very, very early for the next morning’s flight. We had a coffee at the same table in the same cafe and couldn’t hear a single word, if indeed any announcements were made while we were in there. Trouble was that even when we sat in the main departure area and could hear the announcements, we couldn’t make head or tail of them anyway. They were in Irish English – and who can understand that?