Men's bums. Do you like to look at them? I confess I'm not much of a fan.
Now, I realise that there are many among us who delight in sitting behind a slog of male cyclists, sweaty bums waggling like a slowly-moving Volkswagen traffic jam viewed from above.
But these aren't Volksies, are they? No, these are the moist, lycra-clad arses of overly-obsessive sad thin men who are partaking of what I suspect is the twenty-fucking-seventh 'tour down under', held in the gormless, goofy town of Adelaide.
Yes, I know there are women cycling enthusiasts, but they exist in nothing like the abominable plague proportions in and around the time of the “Grand Prix of Adelaide cyclists”, The Tour Down Under.
So there I am. Engine running, parked in front of a bunch of damp-cracked men's bums in black lycra. Reminds me of the local river when it gets the blue-green algae and goes all sumpy. The more you see this horror before you, the bigger it seems to get. Posh champagne reflux, anyone?
Normangerman at English Wikipedia
God, what Adelaideans will do for a bit of publicity, deluding ourselves that we're somehow on the global map. Oh, sure. I wouldn't want to ban the AWW because it would deprive our hotel industry of so much opportunity. Also, it would deprive the more appalling of Adelaide's men their own opportunity to look like they belong to something (anything) even if it's a group of grotesquely-shaped Grandpas earnestly puffing and wobbling away in traffic-clogging gaggles of brightly-coloured lycra tops and soggy black lycra shorts.
Gentle reader, these tossers are out and about for weeks before, during and after this bloody race. Public money is often wasted on public health campaign. Have you seen bus hoardings telling us to watch out for “drunk walkers”? Surely we could we have: “If You Beer Belly and Lycracycle, You're A Bloody Idiot.
My life in Adelaide is sometimes a bit like existing in a strange substrata which occasionally crosses into (and often through) “real” society. See, the rest of the city seems delighted by things like the car race, usually accompanied by a gig topped with golden oldies like AccaDacca, the Fringe Festival (which really should be renamed “more fucking comedians”) while I'm largely nonplussed, disinterested, and resigned to the annual practice of trying to find alternate routes around the city while discovering local music and interacting with the musicians.
No, the city wasn't designed for the likes of niche-heads like me, but it wasn't designed for cyclists or motor races either.
Fair enough, people of all tastes gotta be catered for and, alright, Womad and the Adelaide Festival itself do occasionally feature some things I'm kind of interested in, but by and large these events are for other people.
Confession: I've never been to Womad - if I'm interested, I'm usually only interested in one outfit, and the cost to get in is 'per day' and ... yes, it's usually disgustingly hot and I frankly hope I never have to stand in a fucking field in horrendous heat to see a band in daylight. Some bands work wonderfully in daylight. But live music and daylight, it gives me the creeps. I for one am glad the Big Day Out is history.
Also around this time, there's Writer's Week, which this year has for the first time in its history provided a spot of welcome light relief in a city over-cluttered with events, self-importance and artistic and sporting delusions.
The lefty-luvvy bunfight over free speech and the selection of guests at the AWW made me wonder about - all those folks who never appeared. For example, why on earth did Barry Humphries never appear after 1978? It's not as if he never revisited Australia; he was a frequent offender who for four decades would pack out Her Majesty's Theatre in Adelaide, night after night. Ol' Baz would've sold Writers Week out in the space of heartbeats, he'd have been a huge draw. So ... perhaps his fee was too large? Perhaps he wasn't asked? Or perhaps he didn't fancy the idea of large numbers of yobbos asking him rude questions ...
... or perhaps Ol' Baz might've caused a few well-fed twin-set-and-pearl types to spill their plastic cup of warm red on the prize assistance shitzu in front ... perhaps O'l Baz didn't appear in the 1980s 'cos he would have been too much of an uneasy fit. Too many uncomfortable truths. Which brings me to all the recent chest-beating about freedom of speech.
In the context of AWW, squawking about freedom of speech versus censorship is a nonsense because, while, yes, robust literary debate sometimes occurs beneath the humid tents, the writers always seem to be mostly selected by what I think of as 'brahmin lefty-luvvies'. Lest you think I'm being frivolous in my comparison, the official duties of the brahmin are accepting and giving gifts, studying the vedas and teaching from a philosophical virtue/ethical position...
To protest about a lack of freedom of speech in an environment which has (as far I can see) always exercised censorship by selection by such brahmin is nothing short of hypocritical.
During the current ring-twitter-in-a-teacup beano (January 2026, for those of you reading after this year), I noticed that several recent articles in the ABC and Guardian pages seem horrified by a piece by US writer Tom Friedman called “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom”; got several writers angry enough to insist on his being banned from last time's AWW. Apparently ol' Tom was only going to appear via video link; not for him the baking radioactive rays of Adelaide in summer. Sensible chap in that sense.
In the end ol' Tom wasn't included on the AWW list anyway. However, not one of these articles actually quotes the Friedman piece; and the NY Times has a bit of a paywall. So here's a convenient link.
As you can see, it's pretty much devil's advocate stuff, and quite amusing - as long as you don't live in the Middle East, or the USA, in which case I'm sure you'd be quite annoyed. But you know, what with the horror, chaos and devastation going on around the world right now, I think what some Seppo wrote is surely small beer.
Okay, so overall, Friedman is quite pro-Israel, painting Israel's foes and allies as being either poisonously dangerous or crap - a point which I suspect many Americans agree with. But Randa Whatserface's pro-Palestinian attitude surely puts her about level on points. Personally I think they're both wrong about quite a lot, but my opinion - like yours, I fancy - is irrelevant.
Which is why it would have been fine fare to see Randa Whatserface going toe-to-toe with good ol' Tom Carrionbird - which surely is precisely what a writer's week should be about: intellectuals hoiked from their ivory skyscrapers or leafy burb (or cramped workstation) and airing their differences of opinion in front of real people fed up with the steamy heat and half drunk on warm wine, pissing themselves laughing at the overblown, self-important bozos who think their public posturing makes a damn bit of difference anywhere except their bank accounts. Opportunity missed, I feel: Randa Whatsit and ol' Tom Carrionbird should've been forced to appear on the same stage, FFS.
I mean, if we can't have Jerry Springer at AWW (ED: He’s dead) could we have a bit more broader, honest debate, please? But, if ol' Tom had to be disinvited, why should we have a problem with Randa Whatsit being similarly disinvited, hmmm?
At some point the circus got seriously surreal as well-meaning goof Jarvis Cocker waded in, threatening not to play the festival opening gig unless someone apologised to someone else. Cocker is well-known for taking emotional stands (waggling his arse at Michael Jackson in full pop-god adulation mode at the 1996 Brit Awards was rather wonderful, and for that alone he should be on Royal Mail stamps every year, alongside Spike Milligan, George Formby, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Michael Parkinson, Victoria Wood and Michael Palin - I'm sure you can think of a few more).
If we think Cocker's long-established position on the Palestinians is sympathetic if naive, we can understand that, because plenty of other well-meaning folk have reacted the same way. But ... after all, Cocker is an actual Real Big Star Out There In The Real World, and here he is Getting Involved in Adelaide's ... petty and absurd melodramas. Would've been hilarious if no-one apologised to Randa Whatsherface, but hey, another Jerry Springer moment forever lost...
Yet the media squeal that AWW must go on ... but why, exactly? Yes, as a society we must try to cater to everyone's interests, and certainly the lefty-luvvies need to feel loved with the rest of us. But one niggle is that I really am the kind of person who should be interested in Writer's Week. No, really. I have - literally - thousands of books, and am constantly buying more. Probably about two-thirds being non-fiction. And yet... so little of the Writer's Week lists interest me. And I know a large number of readers with large collections (at least five in Adelaide with larger and more varied collections) who never bother to glance at the AWW schedule because they know from past disappointments that there's never anything for them.
Alright, I know I'm ignorant of so many of the modern writers that for all I know, the writers to rival Gogol or Jarry are out there. But would such writers get a foot in the door these days anyway? I mean, they really would poke critical fun at the ruling elites and brahmins - and why they deserve to be mocked and harried out of town.
Are there artists of the calibre of (for example) Eric Partridge or George Macdonald Fraser or Gerald Kersh or Ursula Le Guin or Jerry Pournelle or Geoffrey Willans or Ronald Searle or Leo Marks or Cecil Day Lewis or Patricia Highsmith or Josephine Tey or Judith Merrill or Clark Ashton Smith or Dorothy Thompson or Gene Wolfe lurking out there and I haven't realised?
If so, mea culpa. And, no, I've not mentioned Australian writers because there really aren't that many modern Australian writers which get my attention. No, the likes of Peter FitzSimons don't really do it for me, sorry; and the AWW seem to have overlooked prolific local Australian military historian Doctor Tom Lewis; significant local aviation historian David Vincent and local polymath and sometime historian Graham Jenkin ... You'd think that the author of “Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri” would have the luvvies eating out of his hand, but no ...
In case you get the idea I've never attended AWW, I have attended several - mostly to see the following authors: Graham Robb, Iain Banks, Ade Edmondson, James Ellroy, and, erm, aaahh ... I think that's it.
Authors I wish I'd been able to see at the event: Rodney Hall, Michael Palin, Minette Walters, Judith Wright and Mem Fox. Oh, and maybe Tom Stoppard. You can put that down to unavoidable work commitments (you might say I should've called in sick that day but there would've been a far too likely chance of spotting the boss beneath the tents).
Of course, some writers (like Larry Niven and Jack McDevitt) are by now surely far too old to travel. But, like Dr Lewis, David Vincent and Graham Jenkin above, I doubt they were ever considered. And, I'm fairly sure that Anne McCaffrey once visited Adelaide, but not as part of Writers Week.
Wondering, I recently perused some of the big names who'd attended the WW at the Women's Pioneer Gardens since 1976, and come to the conclusion that either the idea was that either the organisers didn't want too many “big hitters” per event, or that their budget was absurdly piffling (or both), or that writers took one look at the map (and an almanack!) and realised that being broiled ten thousand miles from home for the sake of selling a couple of hundred copies was absolutely not worth their time and very far from anyone's idea of an exotic working holiday. Can you imagine their refusal letters? “Awfully sorry, but up to my neck in a dense plot/ complex research, sorry about that, hope it all goes well. Hugs...”
It would of course be essential to offer European or American writers a Business Class flight as a matter of course, because without the ability to sleep, not only is that lengthy flight utterly vile, but then you have to deal with the disgusting heat which flattens you like a wagyu steak in Porleen's sandwich maker. Just curious.
But the heat is surely easy to deal with. Why the devil Writer's Week can't be accommodated in the vast grounds and racketing halls of learning of nearby Adelaide University during the holidays, I cannot fathom. The place is sodding gigantic, and once the boring students have fucked off, there's several large grassy spots which can be tented if you must have tents, with air-conditioned lecture theatres aplenty, and the AU has had a noble history of contributing to literature and art. Not to mention the air-conditioned Adelaide Uni Bar, and the air-conditioned Adelaide Uni Refectory for snacks, meals and literary food-fights.
And I might add that between December and February there is a huge glut of student accommodation which surely could be put to good use ... When I look at it like that, why not a proper Writers Festival, lasting three weeks..? Certainly public money is wasted on the most dreadful claptrap, and certainly it would be rather cool to ... ah, it's only opinion, after all. If I had seriously big money in the bank, I'd get it set up.
However, if I had lesser, but big money? From sometime in early November Adelaide, and its godawful clutter of parochial events and gaggles of cyclists with arses like septic tanks, would have to learn to do without me.
When would I return? well, when would it be considered safe from all the hullabaloo over nothing? Late March? hell, April?
Where would I go, I hear you ask?
Well ... what about Halifax, Nova Scotia? Nice and cold up there, and I won't be stuck in traffic with slogs of men's splodgy rear dewflaps waggling in my face as I go about the city.
I mean, it's really enough to put you off your prawn quenelle poached in chicken brodo. But you know, I guess that's socialism for you. Pass the Dom Perignon...
