Uncivil War

West vs East... Australia, that is... The Miners vs the Suits etc.

The Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, has never had much love for the eastern states - New South Wales in particular & his parochial pride style of politics obviously resonates with the citizens of W.A. who returned him to government in last year's state election, with a whopping 89.8% majority in the Lower House

With the advent of the Plague over the last 18 months & despite the Prime Minister's talk of a united approach between the State & Federal governments, the détente between east & west was short lived & it was soon back to sniping, border closures & isolationist rhetoric that wasn't far from suggesting secession from the rest of the country

Now, with the release of his annual Budget & declaring a $2 billion surplus, he's at it again, declaring that New South Wales had 'failed' in these Plague times, to manage either its economy, or the outbreak(s), suggesting that NSW should have adopted his hardline border closure & lockdown approach... & that NSW is responsible for infecting the rest of the country, as well as New Zealand (The 'Best Prime Minister in the World' is yet to comment on this accusation...). And it's a bit rich, Mark, suggesting that what works for a State that only has 2.68 million people, will work for somewhere with 8.2 million people... that the policies of a State that gets all its money from mining, would be just as effective in places where there's nothing much in the ground except coal & gas & even those aren't as popular as they once were... If your idea of progress is more & bigger holes in the ground, then we won't even have to worry about you seceding - we'll wake up one day to find the Western half of the country has collapsed in on itself & sunk into the Indian Ocean

In short (too late!!) - Pull your head in, you moronic miner!!

New Addition

So... A year ago, Long-Suffering Partner gave me the go-ahead to buy a new guitar. She knew I've wanted a 'good' 12-string acoustic guitar for at least as long as she's known me (& longer than that if we're being honest!!) & 2021 was deemed the year this could finally happen. So off we went to the reasonably local guitar shop to try out a few. Having owned a Maton 6-string acoustic for over 20 years & been in love with its sound & durability, I was set on a Maton 12-string - a couple of musicians I've known over the years have owned them & I'd been impressed...

Arriving at the shop & finding our way to the acoustic guitar section (after being dragged away from the Gibson hollow-body electrics, the Thinline f-hole Fender Telecaster & a nice-looking fretless bass), I made a bee-line for the Maton 12-string hanging on the wall & gave it a run-through of some of my guitar pieces, to see how it sounded & felt... & it was as good as I remembered the others being. I was all set to place an order & pay a deposit when the salesman suggested I try the Cole Clark 12-string as well. Cole Clark was a luthier for Maton guitars, but left them due to... well, whatever the luthier equivalent of 'artistic differences' is & set up his own factory. An erstwhile guitarist/friend had once raved about their 6-strings to me, but I'd never heard, let alone played, one. Still, you owe it to yourself to be thorough about these things, so I took the CC 12-string down & played a couple of the pieces I'd just tested the Maton with...

... & it was simply game over. The Cole Clark was fuller, brighter & kind of had more definition of notes across the strings. I tried the Maton again, then the CC, then the Maton... then the CC, then put the Maton back on the wall & started choosing which woods I wanted for the front, back & sides of my custom Cole Clark guitar. Being me, there were a couple of other considerations - foremost being that I play guitar 'upside down', meaning that I have the thicker bass strings below the treble ones - so it looks like I just picked up a right-handed guitar & started playing... which, in a nutshell, is more or less exactly what happened about 37 years ago. On my old, cheap Korean 12-string I had reversed the order of strings 8-12, so that the higher/thinner string was on top, so it wasn't strictly a simple matter of taking a left-handed guitar & reversing the strings. All this was duly noted, a deposit paid & the guitar would be ready "around March 2021"... In March 2021, it would be ready in June. In June, it would be ready in August. In August it would be ready in December... I got a call from the shop on Thursday &, history being what it is, as soon as the salesman said who he was & where he was calling from, I said "It'll be ready in June 2022, won't it?!", but no... it had arrived in store that day!!!!

Plans were immediately made to go & get it, without further delay &, after some impatient sitting in & threading through traffic, we arrived at the store & made our way to the acoustic guitar section (after being dragged away from the Gibson hollow-body electrics, the Thinline f-hole Fender Telecaster & a nice-looking fretless bass), where Laurie the salesman emerged with a Cole Clark-branded case, inside which was:-





First thing I noticed, after being impressed with the symmetrical timbers & just the overall look of the thing, was that they hadn't strung, or tuned it as per my instructions. A trifling complaint after 12 months, but then again, they'd had 12 months to refer to the notes & e-mails from back when the order was placed... Anyway, I knew that was something I could fix without too much trouble & Laurie the salesman immediately threw in a replacement set of strings, without me even asking, so all was good. Especially when, after some tuning & tweaking, I gave the guitar a thorough run-through with a few of my instrumental pieces & was reminded why I'd chosen the Cole Clark over the Maton. All of the observations & comments mentioned above, remained true. No worries - Pay the balance, close up the case & drive home very carefully!!

This afternoon I re-strung the as-yet-unnamed new baby & spent the next couple of hours playing everything I could think of, until it was time to go & collect L-SP from her Christmas work lunch, then came home & played a bit longer, while she made generally positive comments & faces. At her suggestion, I unearthed the old 12-string, which I was surprised to see still had its full complement of strings & demonstrated the difference between an $800 guitar &... one that cost a significant amount more than that. Fortunately, she was convinced

Only the combination of a phone call from an erstwhile bandmate, the persistence of a hungry cat & the slightly sore, twin-string indentations on my fingertips made me stop for the day...

What do we think of the name 'Huddie' for the guitar - for Huddie Ledbetter, the 1930s Blues player? If you can look past his multiple jail terms for various violent acts, he was one hell of a 12-string player...