The me generation
We first noticed this behaviour at a Tom Jones concert at the Westpac Stadium in Christchurch soon after it opened, and that was an inability of an audience to sit still and appreciate the performance. Instead, it seemed that the majority of those there wanted to get up and wander around, talk, sometimes on mobile phones, casually wander in and out to food and beverage outlets and then, as a consequence, make frequent trips to the toilets as the show went on. You would think that these people had an attention deficit disorder, but Marty is one of those people who would have likely been dosed up on Ritalin had it been around when he was young, and to this day, even with a failing prostate, he can remain seated and attentive throughout a concert - it just requires discipline even if it means not eating or drinking for three days beforehand. People do not get up and wander about at will at the opera or at classical music performance, they do not do it at work meetings and they would get thrown out of the ballet if they tried it there. So, why does it happen at seated rock music performances?
In my mind, it is undisciplined and ignorant both to performers and other members of the audience, and a review of a book called The Sixties in the weekend Observer gives a possible insight to the reason why it happens. The author, Jenni Diski, a hippie of that generation, describes the time as the age of selfishness and talks of the problematic consequence of doing your own thing even when it clashed with someone else's own thing, and that the "doing your own thing" of the sixties has directly led to the self-absorbed behaviour of the subsequent "me generation". It maks sense, these people are more important than the peformers.
Diski is right, some of our generation have made self-centred and rude behaviour an art form, an inability to sit down and listen at concerts has nothing to do with attention deficits or any other justifiable explanation, and it would be better if some people just stayed at home. Like the man next to us last night at Wembly Arena (the seated indoor venue, not the stadium) for the concert featuring John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and BB King with his band. After arriving two-thirds the way through the first act and with a girth spreding over more than his own seat, he then leaned forward blocking our view with his sheer bulk, drank beer, and got up frequently to get refills or for a toilet break. And if it were just him, we could put it down to an isolated thing, but a constant stream of people moved around and walked in and out. At one stage, of the nine people in our immediate row, four had gone outside and it was only rarely that all nine were seated listening.
I moved, to another row, and ended up with an excellent view. John Mayall, who I saw in '72, '73 and last in '74 and is now 75 years of age and in great form, fresh from a six month spell where, it seems, he briefly contemplated retirement (fancy that at his age). His repertoire lasted an hour, ending with a dazzling 10 minute or more version of Room to Move. But if John Mayall is in great nick at 75, BB King is still going almost-strong at age 83. Kaelene and Anousheh both saw him live more than twenty years ago, Marty never. He now performs seated and spends a good deal of time is spent chatting with the audience, or flirting with women in the crowd. Again though, a splendid gig with an excellent backing band and covering all of the old favourites: The Thrill is Gone, Let the Good Times Roll, a very rocked-up version of When Love Comes to Town, The Letter, and then a very cute You are My Sunshine. He told us he could accept the label of a legend because he had stood the test of time with more than 10,000 concerts over sixty years in the business. And if last night was anything to go by, every performance would have been good. The body may be a bit wobbly, but his showmanship hasn't dimminished one bit and the voice and guitar are as good as ever.
As for us, we are booked to see Madame Butterfly at Covent Garden on Wednesday night and if this new behaviour is orthodox at a rock show, we think we'll take a keg of beer and bags of potato crisps to the opera. We'll show 'em!

A day in the life
We are not ones given easily to surprise but on Saturday night you could have knocked us over with a feather. After a full day's music at the Hard Rock Calling concert in London's Hyde Park, Neil Young returned to the stage and ripped in to a grungy encore version of the Beatles song A Day In The Life, then a few minutes in who walks on stage and joins in but Paul McCartney himself. Together they belted out the remainder of the song, just getting louder and more frenetic until there were no strings left unbroken on Young's guitar. For a moment he looked like he was going to break into a Pete Townshend windmill routine and smash the guitar completely, instead he just abandoned it and, with Sir Paul, wandered off and the pair played a funny little piece on the xylophone before leaving arm in arm. Now normally, we wouldn't' cross the road to see Paul McCartney, but this was completely unexpected and we will admit that it was pretty exciting to see him in the flesh, or should we say the plastic and botox.
This is concert season the England. The Isle of Wight, Glastonbury and about ten other outdoor festivals and it means the country is crawling with good bands, and it would only be proper to comment on how well organised the London event was. Entry was a breeze, the queues moved quickly and without hassle from over-zealous security, inside there was plenty of room to stretch out and there were sufficient food and drink facilities that meant people didn't have to jostle and queue for sustenance. And then there was the concert itself which ran according to the minute of a detailed schedule emailed out the day before. It just goes to show that improvisation at rock and roll concerts just ain't what it used to be.
Hard Rock Calling is a three day affair, on our day nineteen bands on three stages. We arrived just before 3.00pm for the Pretenders and stayed for Seasick Steve (check him out), Ben Harper, the Fleet Foxes and then Young's two hour spot starting at 8.15. For the sake of review, the man dubbed the godfather of grunge was in superb form, starting with Into the Black, his anthem to Johnny Rotten, and then a set list including The Needle and the Damage Done, Cinnamon Girl, Heart of Gold and about a fifteen minute version of Rockin' in the Free World with at least four endings. Each time he stopped playing and the crowd cheered, he teased them by breaking into another last, louder and raunchier verse.
But as well as the bands, there are other things that kept us amused. As the hot, sunny day greyed over and turned to lightening and thunderstorms, it must have been the low cloud that kept the haze of marijuana smoke hanging low, or could it have been just the quantity consumed by the tangata whenua behind us? There were the old hippes and the young punks, those who flaked out well before Neil Young came on stage and the old rockers who wore a path in the grass to the bar and then toilet so frequent were their trips. Then there were those who didn't appear to know why they were there, such as the man in front who clearly had paid his 45 quid to bring his foldable seat and read the business section of the Weekend Guardian. Still, at one stage we caught his foot inadvertently tapping to the music.
Such is the number of bands in town that, while Bruce Springsteen is playing the Hard Rock gig tonight, BB King along with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers are playing Wembley. We'll be there.

It's a long long way to Tipperary
But for her ability to let rip with volleys of profane language from time to time, it would be hard to believe anyone less likely to have descended from a transported criminal than Kaelene. But it is true, her great-grandfather was dispatched from Tipperary to Tasmania in 1851 for the crime of sheep stealing. Three years incarceration in the North Tipp (as we locals call it) prison at a town called Nenagh, from1848, was followed by seven years in Australia, ten years in all was the punishment meted out at that particular time for that particular crime.
Such was the calling of family history that we found ourselves in County Tipperary looking for signs of the past, and we found some. One wing remains of what was originally eight wing gaol built in 1840 to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of those imprisoned mainly for petty crime during the great famine. The gaol's structure is fascinating, its wings fanned out around an octagonal shaped Governor's house which allowed the Governor direct access to all of the wings from his living quarters. At the gaol's entrance still stands a gatehouse with cells for condemned prisoners and a balcony facing the street which, at the time, allowed locals to gather and watch the hangings. The local courthouse was reached from the prison by way of an underground passage. These days, the Governor's House is used as a visitors' centre, complete with museum relics and a genealogy specialist who, at 50 Euro a time, will search for your family records, success not guaranteed.
Later, we toured back country roads successfully finding, with the able assistance of SatNav Ken, Toomyvara (or the Tomb of the O'Mearas), where Kaelene's great-great grandparents are reportedly buried (yes, we think we found the actual graveyard), and farmland which is all that remains of a settlement called Garrane, the area from where that line of the family hailed. We stopped and took photos of an empty paddock, probably to the amusement of a nearby farmer, and marvelled at the wonders of technology which allowed us to find this spot down an old country lane so little used that the grass was growing down its centre.
If we had been unimpressed with the food and service at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dublin, the same could not be said of Pepe's Restaurant in the Ormond Hotel at Nenagh. An Italian restaurant within this classic old-style Irish pub, the food was simply magnificent and of international several-star quality. So delicious were our chicken salads, we indulged in sharing a Toblerone cheesecake for desert, and while Nenagh might still be a small Tipperary town with a population of only 7,000, not even it has escaped the influence of the European Union, the waitress was Latvian.
En route to Nenagh we stopped by the Cahir Castle which dates back to 1142 and is said to be one of the largest medieval castles in Britain and then to the unusually named Swiss Cottage (it is correctly called a cottage orne - a result of the picturesque movement of the late 18th, early 19th century, usually refers to smallish houses built in a somewhat artificial rustic manner. Characterised by thatch much use of timber features etc. Popular for estate buildings) which in true Irish fashion is not Swiss at all. It was built by the First Earl of Glengall as a country cottage where he could pretend to slum it on summer holidays and idle weekends. The story goes that the servants were all stationed downstairs below ground so the family could pretend that they were roughing it by tending to themselves. Somehow because you couldn't see the cooks actually working it meaning that the owners could imagine and convince guests they had done the cooking themselves. Curious, but an interesting house nevertheless where nothing quite matches and the windows and doors are all of different shapes and designs, apparently to show that nothing in nature is symmetrical.
Post Nenagh it was back on the tourist trail: the Rock of Cashel, the ruins of an 11th century abbey; Galway and Galway Bay; little coastal towns including the port of Rosseval, the bleak landscape and peat bogs of Connemara, and a pretty little town called Oughtercard.
We were often credited with bringing the good weather to Ireland and initilly this was much to our amusement. The first few times we were puzzled as, although it was warm enough, the skies were grey and there was little sign of sun. As it turns out, as long as is not raining then it is good weather and we were happy to tak the credit. But then it did turn properly sunny and any credit turned to blame. "Oi'll not be takin' any more of this heat, so I won't, so I won't" the common refrain.

The new craic
We had thought the craic or crack was Irish for sharing the news or gossip, or engaging in a type of exuberant pub banter, but that may not be so. A new derivation may be more suited to the sort of young Irish women we have become accustomed to seeing, those we could generalise as akin to tattooed granite blocks, like front row forwards who, as they bend over to eat another potato pie or cream pastry, reveal G-string underwear riding entirely out the top of jeans desperately looking for hips to cling on to. Then, rising phoenix-like, dead-centre between their ample backside cheeks, a big hot-rod flame-shaped tattoo licking the small, or in these cases the large, of their backs. Usually there are other markings as well; a matching dove or cherub above each plump,trussed breast and bands around ankles and arms, and it is not a good look, but one from which eyes cannot find refuge. We have been exposed to an altogether different form of craic and we hope it is not a lasting form.
The topic of Irish women raises a another issue and that is American-Irish women. Apparently it is fact that 95 percent of Americans see no need of travelling outside of the United States and so do not have passports, but it seems that every single one of the other 5 percent is in Ireland at the same time as us and every one is celebrating their Irish heritage. In Galway the pub was full to overflowing with sparkling-eyed Colleens, all with fair skin and reddish wavy hair, and only when they spoke was their drawl revealed. It must be that, despite the time that has elapsed since the Irish colonised the East Coast of the United States, they have carefully maintained a diminishing gene pool by breeding only with their own. Still, we gave encouragement to one, from North Carolina, who had her ten month old baby out for a night of revelry, dancers tapping out their liverdance routines to the accompaniment of mournful live music.
These Americans must all be Republicans because when we discovered by chance the ancestral home of the Kennedy family in County Wexford not a single one of them was there. Actually we just stopped at the gate and peered in as Marty was not about to fork out 5 Euro each to step inside the one room cottage of Patrick Kennedy, the great grandfather of John F Kennedy, particularly when the great JFK only went there once himself on the 27 June 1963. On the back of that single visit the locals have planted an arboretum with 4,500 different varieties of trees, and we magine that, had Kennedy not been assassinated and become a regular, Ireland could now be completely wooded with not an acre of farmland left.
Our drive down down the South-East coast took us through countryside which is far more similar to that of New Zealand than any of the other British or European landscape we have seen. The roads are different though, narrow lanes flanked on either side by stone walls or hedges, in some cases trees form canopies right over the lanes, and the old towns have houses of different colours fronting onto the streets. In some parts too, only the local Irish language is spoken and none of the road signs are in English.
Perhaps the real find was the castle at Lismore which unexpectedly appears in the woodland as you turn a corner approaching the town. Sitting imposing and high above the Blackwater river in County Waterford, the castle's website describes it as perhaps the most spectacular in Ireland and remains the private residence of the Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavenidish. The castle can be hired out when the Duke is not in residence, it sleeps up to twenty-four guests who are able to "enjoy all the splendour and privacy of living in the Duke's quarters of the castle and are looked after by his own personal staff". The price for renting it is available only on request, and only the garden and art gallery are open to the public. Despite that, it is utterly spectacular and by way of trivia, we learned that Adele Astair, the sister of Fred, lived there between 1932 and 1944.If there are generalisations or be made about the Irish, one would be that the farmers seem to spend all day driving their tractors through towns and along country lanes, completely blocking roads for miles on end and causing rural traffic jams. Not once have we seen a tractor working a field, but there are dozens and dozens out driving. That, of course, may explain the great potato famine of the 1800's, the farmers were too busy careering around the countryside than tending to their crops.

Underwhelmed in Ireland
If we were mystery shoppers, or at least mystery diners, we would have rated Dublin's Hard Rock Cafe as the poorest of their nine restaurants across seven countries we have visited so far this year. Given the prices, a little under $NZ40 for a salad, it could be expected the order would be right, the lettuce fresh rather than brown-tipped and soggy, and the dressing with more substance than a watery puddle in the bottom of the plate. Wisely though, it may have been in anticipation of such criticism that the Dublin cafe does not appear to participate in the chain's international customer satisfaction survey, and the waiter failed to ask the all important question of whether we had enjoyed the meal - leaving us feeling short-changed at not getting the chance to express at least some disappointment.
But if the Hard Rock Cafe left us cold, so too did our arrival in Dublin. The point, we thought, of pre-booking a rental car was so it would be ready when we arrived but clearly that's not what happens here. After a firm lecture from the woman behind the Budget Rentals counter about who would pay and how much if any damage occurred (us of course, no matter whose fault), we were dispatched to what looked like a shipping container converted into an office to pick up the car. Or rather, to shiver in the summer cold outside the container for more than thirty minutes awaiting its arrival. As it turned out there was no need for us to beat up the car, someone had done it already, and taken the hubcaps - although the latter meant that we could readily identify our car when we had forgotten its parking spot.As with the car, the point of pre-booking a hotel was so that our arrival could be anticipated, making registration efficient and easy, and if the booking had actually worked that may have been the case. But not so,the internet must be slow in Ireland as we had arrived ahead of the booking. As it turned out, our hotel was right opposite the Shamrock Football Club's home ground and this had a bearing on things, for when we went into the restaurant to settle in for a quiet dinner we were told that food isn't served on match days. Or at least that's what we think we were told. Food in the restaurant, it seems, just gets in the way of preparing for the after-match drinkers.Maybe we were just looking in the wrong places but rather than displaying signs of being one of Europe's vibrant, tiger economies, Dublin seems just like any other run down and sightly tatty working-class city, the main distinguishing feature being that is very expensive. A good hearty steak meal seems to cost fractionally under 30 Euro, or around $NZ75, a pop and even more modest dishes to be around 15 Euro so, on our budget, we were reduced to foraging on the sides of roads and begging with others outside parking buildings.But if it is too expensive to eat, then there is wonderful value in a tour of Dublin Castle where for 4.50 Euro a guide, whose mannerisms and looks closely resembled those of Ned Reithmuller, the son of a friend of ours, provided an entertaining and lively commentary. We learned that the city's name is derived from Dubh Linn or Black Pool, where the castle was eventually built after firstly the Irish ran the Viking rulers out in 1014 and then the Normans conquered them all in 1169. The castle's interior is quite exquisite and still used for state ceremonies - although a perfect opportunity was lost to behead former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she became the last person to have actually stayed there.
Our navigation was made easier through Dublin and Ireland with the invaluable assistance of Ken, our Australian SatNav friend. Although one thing is evident, Ken hasn't been here for a while and hasn't a clue about Dublin's one-way traffic system and other such essentials. Or maybe he is homophobic and just didn't want us to find the gay and lesbian parade which was on that day as every time we tried to find our way to its location he sent us in circles elsewhere.

Death to the commuter, or is that computer?
It may not have been the fault of the London Underground that the Piccadilly line between Kings Cross Station and Hyde Park was closed due to a passenger being wedged under a train, but that would be about the only time. We blame Tory mayor Boris Johnson for the demise of a formerly almost brilliant tube service, never before have we struck so many disruptions: two strikes, weekend line maintenance, station closures and plain old breakdowns, this is about as unreliable and inefficient as a London shop assistant. The worst part is the inaccurate information that often accompanies these disruptions, the other day, for instance, when on our way to St Pancras Station and lugging heavy cases, it was only after we had got off the Central line, and towed our bags several hundred yards through rush hour congestion and up about three short flights of stairs did we find that the Victoria line was closed for maintenance and that we had to backtrack, go two further stops on the Central line and get the Piccadilly line. It seemed reasonable to think that they could have provided early advice.
Despite those impediments, the tube delivered us without holdup or disruption yesterday to the House of Commons, probably as an antidote for the threatened delays once we got there. It may be a tactic to discourage visitors, but the gate-keeper told us that there would be an hour and forty-five minute wait to get in. Once through security, however, where Kaelene was again detained, we found our way to the debating chamber with only the minimum of waiting time. Perhaps twenty minutes. Unashamedly, we were voyeurs looking for a stoush given the disclosure that day of all expenses claims submitted by members of parliament. But instead of gibing and taunting over such things as the claiming of 1 pence for a phone call or the now infamous moat cleaning, all we got was a dissertation on Food, Farming and the Environment from Hillary Benn, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to an audience of variously between nine and thirteen MPs and a classload of children from Wales in the gallery. Scintillating stuff, such as the question from Mr Roger Williams, the Liberal Democratic member for Brecon and Radnorshire, who asked whether the secretary had any estimate of the percentage of stock that had been vaccinated against bluetongue in England this year. It was, assured Mr James Palce, the Conservative member for South-East Cambridgeshire, a serious question and we were glued to our seats.
It was remarkable that so few MPs were present, particularly given the seriousness of another debate called Preparing Britain's Economy for the Future and a later one we unfortunately missed, examining lessons to be learned from Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. But in another way it was not surprising. The house has seating for only 437 of its 646 members and we supposed that most MPs feared they would miss out on seats that day and stayed away. They could have joined us in the public gallery because, despite the artificial delays in getting in, the gallery is only ever about a quarter full.
There has been something of a tragedy and it may compromise this diary. Marty's netbook computer has hemorrhaged and now not only refuses to work but also even to get up in the morning. With that, our collection of photographs and a host of other work stands to be lost forever perhaps our own fault because, consistent with our relaxed transient-lifestyle, none of it was backed up. While the computer is booked in for open heart surgery next week, we are heading to Ireland to ask the head of the Roman Catholic Church to pray for its full recovery. We ask that also of you.

Of falsehoods and fishermen
It may be a case of false promotion but if you were to believe their postcards the Belgian coast would be full of bronzed, bare-breasted beauties, the swimming suit of yesteryear relinquished in favour of the birthday suit of the current day. We went looking but the only points of interest to be found were a few fishermen and the hardy, fully clothed against grey skies and coolish summer weather.
Oostduinkerke may not be the best known of European holiday spots but it is here the grandparents of Fleurs’s friend Thomas have an apartment which looks out from its fourth floor vantage point across the sand dunes onto a beach which stretches to the Netherlands in the North and France in the South. To the West across the Channel, although not to be seen, is England. Dotted among the dunes at our end of town are a few holiday homes, most of them still shuttered-up since winter, and a huge, stark building which belongs to the socialists and used until recently as a children’s camp, now destined we understand to be home to a Belgian reality television show. Bleak Brother or something appealing like that no doubt. In town, a wide promenade is bordered on one side by tall apartment blocks and, at ground level, restaurants, shops with plastic buckets and spades, toys, kites and souvenirs, and places hiring out novelty pedal-powered devices. On the seaside is a row of stark, uniform white huts which can be hired throughout the summer to store beach gear. For the first month of summer the place seems very quiet but it comes alive, we are told, in July and August. Perhaps it is then the restaurants will stay open after 7 at night.
But if bare-breasted beauties were not to be found, the other subjects of local postcards were about; the fishermen in yellow parkas and leggings who trawl the shore each day using Clydesdale-like horses to pull nets though the chest-high surf. At the end of each trawl, the nets are emptied on the beach and useable fish, in this case shrimps, stored in cane baskets strapped to the sides of the horses. Left behind to the marauding seagulls or to be washed back into the sea are the small crabs, baby flounder and hundreds of jellyfish, the latter of which seemed to have the texture and look of discarded silicone breast implants. It was all very photogenic, aside perhaps from the fact that the catches seem meager, the fishermen playing to an audience of skinny legged, pasty schoolchildren and a local journalist and photographer.
In the distance from the balcony of the apartment we could see Dunkirk, or Duinkerke as the Belgians spell it, the scene of the great landing during World War II, and in the other direction Nieuwpoort. Although much bigger than Oostduinkerke, Nieuwpoort has the same look and feel with its tall apartment blocks, wide promenade and pedal-powered contraptions for hire. We know this because we walked there, for what seemed like miles, along the beach, stopping at a pier from which local children were trying their hand with crab nets and others were fishing with rods without any visible sign of success.
It was in Nieuwpoort too that we came across the geriatric equivalent of a biker-gang run. Elderly in wheel chairs everywhere, ten abreast and at times blocking the entire promenade. This was intimidating stuff and maybe why the single helicopter of the Belgian armed forces hovered overhead. Keeping order, or maybe ensuring that this gang of oldies was not going to disrobe and bring the postcards to life.