The Tower of Babble On

It was obvious from the very first moment that this wasn’t our crowd.

It didn’t help that I was wearing purple riding boots, but mainly it was because of the dense cloud of smugness that filled the joint like cigarette smoke in a ’50s RSL Club. The stench of self-satisfaction, in that auditorium within the bowels of the Masonic Centre, was gagging.

This was the political literati, the people who compulsively read everything Glenn Mine spatters in tabloid ink and take every word from Laurie Oaks as gospel truth.

Paul Kelly (the editor, not the singer) was being interviewed about his new book, The March of Patriots, which had been the hot topic among commentators all week as they fought a protracted history war over which recent prime minister was most reformist. The interviewer, former ABC reporter and keen interrogator of yore, Maxine McKew.

Yet for an event that was hosted by Gleebooks, there was an alarming absence of glee in the uniform ranks of straight-faced suit-wearers. The crowd would no doubt describe itself as “intellectual”, while a less charitable observer would call them “pretentious”. “Aspirational” might be a good compromise.

The distressing lack of alcohol, at the supposed happy hour of a Friday evening, was only emphasised by the Jagermeister and Red Bull that was percolating in our own otherwise empty stomachs as we took our seats in the back row.

We watched over a sea of bobbing bald patches – and one impressive silver mane that looked suspiciously like it belonged to Bob Hawke – as the pair of them took the stage in what looked, at first, like a production of Lateline: The Stage Show.

However, that impression was immediately dashed as Maxine fed Kelly one Labour-leaning set-up question after another; “Kevin Rudd can go to Pittsburgh with a very good story to tell,” Maxine intoned a comment like a question, “He certainly can,” came Kelly’s reply (clearly feeling the heat).

This guided tour of Kelly’s political ideas seemed vaguely familiar. My mind ticked over as my neighbours shifted restlessly in their seats, one picking his nose, another surreptitiously read The Australian. Then it came to me, “So Moira, tell us about this new carpet cleaner”, I immediately expected a knife-set.

Thankfully, at the half-hour mark, things began to get interesting. The door burst open, a tall man in a white robe loudly entered the room in a sea of latin before, stilled by left-wing stares, he apologised for entering the wrong room and slowly backed out again.

The interruption threw Maxine off her script.Meanwhile, Paul Kelly – who had clearly been waiting for this opportunity – produced a guitar and launched into a version of “Dumb Things” that would have made his namesake’s testicles explode in horror.

All right, we should be honest. We’re pretty sure that’s how the meeting ended, but we’re not certain because we couldn’t endure more than half an hour (not without more booze). When the big hand got to the six we stood and, amid a barrage of condescending looks, made our escape to the bar next door.

Once there, a few more drinks helped us recover from the Chinese water torture of Kelly’s halting monotonal speech pattern.

I couldn’t stop asking myself what had drawn them there? Did those people honestly have nothing better to do on a Friday night? And yet sitting on the curb, discussing our superiority to these people, we opened another long-neck and realised; could we really criticise their itinerary?

This concept hung over our heads until the wee hours of the morning, haunting us like teenage addiction… until we were stumbling through the Rocks and reached the defining moment of our night.

A looming construction crane hovered over The Rocks, winking at us with it’s steel eyes, slightly swaying like a girder eucalyptus – It had to be done, whether we liked it or not.

As I took my first, uneasy steps up the ladder I suddenly got a startling insight into the motives of the people who had flocked to the Masonic Centre.

None of us particularly wanted to climb the crane, yet we all wanted to be seen as the kind of people who would, knowing – as we held each rung in a death grip – that the story of it would likely outshine the actual experience. Bizarrely, this flash of empathetic understanding made me feel even less respect for them, because then we reached the top.

The view, from that exposed position atop 100 metres of steel scaffolding, was breath-taking.

The Bridge and Opera House were postcard-perfect, brightly illuminated in stark contrast to the inky blackness of the harbour, while the lights of the city were sparkling jewels that glittered and shimmered in the night air.

Did the literati get the same reward from their own evening “adventure?” Were they in bed at that very moment, with their freshly-signed copy of ‘March of the Patriots’ on their bedside tables, grinning at the new ammunition they’d soon fire off at the next, left-wing cheese dinner?

The sad answer is – probably.

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