Notes on Adelaide

December, 2010

From the Long Lunch in Hutt Street with Alastair C

Here we are outside glorious Puglia Classico in the northern autumnal sunshine. It’s just like home. Rannbo is in the Bari tabloids all the time, and the bikies are free to talk to whoever they like.

We dine on traditional braciole di carne di cavallo, delightful “beef olives” made out of well-performed local racehorses, and swallow large gouts of A.Mano Fiano-Greco, the closest Pugliese white wine we can find to our beloved Mesh rizza.

Puglia Classico is just so much like our natural surroundings of Chianti Classico and metrosexual Hutt Street. We half expect Rannbo to stop by with his haze of media minders for yet another photo opportunity with us Saints boys. 

Which is why we are here. In Italy there are so many saints and saints feast days that all you have to do is say you are a Saints boy and they stuff you with more horsemeat, fill you up with more A.Mano. Rannbo wouldn’t have got into any of this trouble if he had sent us to be his Puglia people. 

It would not have cost the taxpayers one Euro. In Puglia they pay YOU to be a Saints boy. Now that this will be common knowledge back home, we’ve warned the boss of Puglia Classico to beware of bogus Saints boys on his doorstep.

We’ve told him that if they show any signs of having been involved in manual labour, they’re fakes. If they smell rancidly of new money, they’re fakes too. If they speak Italian, they’re definitely fakes.

Saints boys don’t speak other languages. It’s not necessary because we don’t talk to anyone else but ourselves, except maybe when hailing a cab. Terri Starr talks Italian for us because she once worked late nights near the Trevi Fountain in Rome, and had to learn the lingo to extract her payments from dodgy Italian politicians.

Terri has been dealing with the Puglia Classico management and translating our Saints boys’ names back into the original Latin for more thinly-sliced horsemeat.

Rannbo would approve of the bikies over here though, says Terri, who has had a few of them around to her sun-drenched hotel stanza on the Adriatic Coast. Yes, Pugliese bikies are allowed to talk to each other, which he wouldn’t like. They all vote for the Italian Socialist Labor Party though. They agree with more superannuation for politicians and cuts to social welfare spending to fund it.

Most of all, however, Pugliese bikers run the traditional Fiera del Harley-Davidsons, an annual trade fair held in the old part of Bari since 1473. What’s more, they want to take this ancient and time-honoured festival to Adelaide next year for a convention with the local bikies, who are now allowed to talk to each other again.

Few people realise, Terri says, that despite its apparently Anglo name, the sixth Comte de Harley-Davison invented the Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the village of Castelluccio Valmaggiore, Puglia, in 1455. The Comte was trying for a flying machine, but you can’t have everything.

The Fiera del Harley-Davidson has never been outside Puglia before in more than 500 years. For it to go to Adelaide would be a trade and cultural exchange coup of enormous proportions. Bikie gangs would flock to it from all over the world.

For a show of this magnitude and elegance, the Government House lawns are the only option. The head of state always opens the Fiera, so Rannbo gets the gong. And we all know that he would open a door.

After only a short time outside Puglia Classico, we’re getting the drift of what Rannbo’s on about. As only one example, to be the centre of the bikie universe, even for a week, would bring untold glory and riches to SA. 

So with the delicious horsemeat sizzling and the A.Mano flowing, it’s Arrivederci dalla Puglia dei ragazzi Santi. Terri’s words, not ours.