Town Hall Tour Overwhelms Culture-starved Bumpkins

In our endeavor to keep as young as possible and to stay out of the ‘Maximum Security Nursing Home for the Extremely Antiquated’, we decided to go on a few educational tours, to hopefully stretch our somewhat weird brains.  You see it’s the tendrils in the brain that have to be stretched and used, if one expects to live to be ninety years of age. And we sincerely hope we continue to annoy society for at least as long as that.

Our first such adventure would be a tour of the Adelaide Town Hall, so off we went to town. After a really rock and roll trip to town on the long bus, we hit the streets of Adelaide.  Tony was so excited he almost ran down the pavements toward the Town Hall. But he had to stop suddenly for a squirt of nitro to keep his heart going, then he leaned against the nearest wall, taking big breaths and worrying a few pedestrians. Soon Linda gathered him up, hooked him in her arm and away we went.

‘There it is,’ he almost screamed as his nitroglycerine kicked in. ‘It’s the one with the clock tower, paid for by rich donors and some coins from the peasants of the 1830s.’

‘He’s such a show off,’ Linda explained to one or two keenly watching spectators, ‘but he’s quite old and I still love him,’ she said with a wistful smile.

Queen Adelaide greeted us as we walked in to the Town Hall; she had an enormous bottom, we noticed, and wondered how she sat down, or rode a horse; and what would she do if she needed an urgent wee.

Then a few other people drifted in and soon we were a multi-cultural gathering, with people from Italy, China, Viet Nam, Birmingham, Vancouver and even Australia.  Our very interesting tour guide, Glen, began showing us around the building and explaining its history in great detail.  It was all taking a little longer than planned, mainly because the visitor from Birmingham had so many questions, and stories to tell. Soon Glen was asking Linda if she could possibly shut her husband up. But Linda just pretended to be engrossed in the paintings of the old Lord Mayors.  Especially this one of Jane Lomax-Smith, who was once a very cool Lord Mayor, and refused to have a traditional ‘sitting in the mayoral robes’ portrait like all the boring men.

In the concert hall, there is a very impressive pipe organ, and Tony was dying to have a play, but Glen said ‘no’, so Tony went to the Chinese couple and proceeded to bore them with how he used to wow the fans in the jazz clubs. Linda noticed that the couple, who had only a vague grasp of English, nodded their heads a lot and smiled; Linda had seen this so many times before.

Glen then led us to some interesting stones. We were amazed at how hard they were. The woman to the left of Tone is the Italian lady, who smiled a lot and was fascinated by Tony’s story about the time he met Sophia Loren.

In the banqueting room, Glen challenged us to guess what type of wood was used for the wainscoting, and we were all stumped when he said it starts with the letter F.  It turns out that all this gorgeous wood is fake – it’s actually concrete, painted so skillfully, one would never guess, and we were all agog.

In the fancy council meeting room, Tony just had to sit in the Lord Mayor’s chair, as did nearly everyone else in the group, including the old Chinese lady who didn’t know what was going on, but thought it was required.

After nearly two hours, we had seen every nook and cranny, of which there are a great many in this rabbit warren of a building, with all their fascinating artefacts, and we had learned all about King William and Queen Adelaide and the founding of Adelaide and the building of the town hall.  It was very enjoyable, and a lot to absorb.  Our overstretched tendrils were throbbing and we were desperately in need of sustenance.  So off we went in search of a café that sells mostly edible food.