#songlyricsunday - Another Group - Sylvie Boisel - #istillcallaustraliahome - One Song Glory I promise!

Good music doesn't have to stay in Vegas, does it? Not when it's from Elvis Presley - or Celine Dion - or Sylvie Boisel who I am introducing to you this week.

It all started about the time of the first Bleidsloe tournament which was played in Perth Stadium and someone was singing the immortal [it was released originally in 1980 by vaudeville song-and-dance man Peter Allen - whose other big one was I go to Rio and not to mention Tenterfield Saddler which was about a very special person in PA's life] I still call Australia home.

I thought I would be a bit mischievous and say - It can be about another ethnic group or a sporting tribe, can't it? Not strictly musical.

So Sylvie Boisel - she sings in French; English; Spanish and speaks the languages of music. Songs to charm and soothe savage beasts such as the ones you might meet on the sporting field or in the street or indeed inside of you.

And also - mid-August - Le Grand Depart - has some big moments.

Especially when it comes to the time of assessments and examinations. And holidays / vacances.

My English and Welsh friends in particular have their Advanced Levels and the English Baccalaureate.

Since Michael Gove changed the standards from A to G [and probably UG - the mark you get when you don't pass] to 1 to 9 it's been quite a ride.

There are 12 million links alone!

And there are lots of open days to the universities and colleges.

With things like language taster days and forensic sessions.

I've been to cities that never close down
From New York to Rio and old London town
But no matter how far or how wide I roam
I still call Australia home

I'm always traveling, I love being free
And so I keep leaving the sun and the sea
But my heart lies waiting over the foam
I still call Australia home

All the sons and daughters spinning 'round the world
Away from their family and friends
But as the world gets older and colder
It's good to know where your journey ends

And someday we'll all be together once more
When all of the ships come back to the shore
I'll realize something I've always known
I still call Australia home

But no matter how far or wide I roam
I still call Australia, I still call Australia, I still call Australia home
But no matter how far or wide I roam
I still call Australia, I still call Australia, I still call Australia home

thank you SongLyrics for keeping us honest

And Mama Lisa has a French version

Je suis allé dans des villes qui ne ferment jamais
De New York à Rio et la vieille ville de Londres
Mais pour aussi longtemps ou aussi loin que je vagabonde
L'Australie, c'est toujours chez moi.

Je suis toujours en voyage, j'aime être libre
Aussi je continue à quitter le soleil et la mer
Mais mon cœur attend au repos au-dessus de l'écume
L'Australie, c'est toujours chez moi.

Tous les fils et filles, faisant le tour du monde
Loin de leurs familles et amis
Mais quand le monde vieillit et refroidit
C'est bon de savoir où le voyage finit.

Mais un jour, on sera tous ensemble encore une fois
Quand tous les bateaux seront de retour sur le rivage
Je me rends compte d'une chose que j'ai toujours sue
L'Australie, c'est toujours chez moi

Mais pour aussi longtemps ou aussi loin que je vagabonde
L'Australie, c'est toujours, l'Australie, c'est toujours
L'Australie, c'est toujours chez moi.

Sylvie Boisel in action - promotional homepage

And what a moment when receiving the cover of Traveller and Kopernik was on it. Many of you know the wizard of Turin as Nicolaus Copernicus who disseminated the information that the earth orbited the sun; and not the other way around.


In the same way Brian Johnston put Poland at the centre of the European traveller's universe. Both aspiring and established travellers can take that in as they will.

The illustrators/photographers used lots of iStock material especially one for Gdansk.

There were five eats and five other European destinations which had not got quite the same due like Belarus; Bosnia and Albania.

Poland's close neighbour Ukraine may or may not have been mentioned.

Poland - Europe's next boom destination [Johnston: 17 August 2019]

And there were five Polish cities mentioned - two being Krakow and Gdansk.

Meriah Nichols had a great and very mixed time in Krakow - so did the children.

Torun and Wroclaw [the city with so many names] were mentioned too.


Torun is in northern Poland; Wroclaw in the central west of the country close to Germany.

While I find out why the text is going in the middle ...

I will point out that BJ went through a country-focused Collette tour - which is one of the more interesting tour companies out there.

Meanwhile Sue Williams wrote about a very swish Hungarian hotel known as the Nemzeti.

In the Nemzeti there is red nail varnish among the amenities. [Williams 2019]

I had my own splash of red also when I had a wart removed - it was a flap of skin that had been on my neck for some years.

In that vein I will mention one more article about Normandy's Honfleur - there is an eleven-day cruise from Scenic who do river and ocean cruising alike.

December last there was someone from that side of the hexagon ... the side which faces Dover and Kent and so on.

Last week there was something about packing for Provence.

And I have now read The Big Issue's Short Story edition!

There are so many good and invigorating tales.

The book I am reading just now which is on top of the printer is Taddeo's Three women and I am in the third part of Maggie's life. I know about Sloane and Lina and have read their second parts. [124-25: Taddeo 2019 Bloomsbury Commonwealth Edition - lives in the Cultural Studies section of your independent bookshop].

Maggie has a schoolteacher called Aaron K.

As it is the anniversary of Elvis's death - 6 times 7 [42] - I discovered a really fantastic Elvis site.

There was another Elvisersary - the 50th anniversary of a film called CHANGE OF HABIT.

And it appears I cannot count to 200. [Don't trust me with sums/products which are over 144 or 169 at a pinch; unless at the dartboard - which I can do some good combatronics and permutations - lumping and splitting and I do know my 19* and 20*].

There is a wonderful film with Binoche in it called Who you think I am which is about a middle-aged woman's experiences with the Internet.

It begins and ends with a white face mask.

Claire is a very fine French literature lecturer/professor. She gets into Dumas and Dangerous liaisons with equal feeling. And incisive dissemination.

And I like the part where she talks to her son about poetic analysis and description. Finding the rhyme and the three themes - I thought it was alexandrine or something classical or neo-classical.

Ludo and Alex! Those two flatmates!

Some of the most decent portrayals of psychoanalytic psychotherapy ever - a big contrast with Change of Heart. That tends to provide a transactional/transformative analysis.

Also there is a false document/manuscript involved. An autofiction.

There are some other interesting books out there like Salt by Bruce Pascoe and Deep Time Dreaming by Billy Griffiths.

Leser's Women Men and the Whole Damn Thing rocks my socks. I hope it does yours too.

[it helps if you've read his memoir about his Dad and Bernard Leser's stratospheric life in the magazine industry - everyone except him was a woman by the 1970s and 1980s].

In the Short Story Edition I was impressed with the works Learning to be Leb [Michael Mohammed Ahmad]; Betsy Number Four [Mark Brandi - do you remember Small Town - Big Secret - Sporting Reason?]; Bright Objects [Mirandi Riowe]; Cloud Brawls [Greg Foyster]; How to negotiate a dinner party with poetry [Alicia Sometimes]; Gull Song [Ellen van Neerven] and Joyriders [Chloe Wilson]. Also Goldfish get the blues [Lisa Walker].

That was a marvellous issue 593.

20 August 2019 is the Social Traders Conference at the Abbotsford Convent. There is a 10% discount if you use the BIGISSUE code on your tickets.

And Nicko and the High Tower - did it make you want to dive? That was by Simon Castles who was once an Editor of The Big Issue.

There were 424 submissions all up and [books editor] Thuy On [whose recommendations I need to take on some more] and [author] Nicola Redhouse looked at them all.

"Stories of hope, love, loss and even the world's biggest slide. A special edition indeed," says Katherine Smyrk the Deputy Editor.

Another thing that makes the fifteenth short story edition special would be Michelle Pereira's illustrations. - @youngpapadum - those are delicious especially in soup.

Cabbage as toilet paper for those knights - one of those intertextual details you learn to savour.

Queen of the Publication by the younger Olivia Newton-John is fabulous. Helmut Newton took her picture in a high fashion way. Haute couture. Reminded me a lot of what the Visual Arts honours students are doing and have done.

22 August is the opening of The Australian Dream which Stan Grant has directed about the effects and consequences of racial hatred on the life and career of Adam Goodes.

There is a great story by Nick Miller about 30 years since the Berlin Wall and the revolutions which made Central Europe what it is today. Was especially delighted because Drebecen is in there. Those two Hungarian friends - Bella and Nagy the activists.

And those Dekalog moments - that epic is set in and around a Warsaw apartment [I may have said before - Preisner is a deep bath - and I am not above rewriting Hotel California for my own purposes]. Then I remembered Michael Dembinski and his Jeziorki. There is an Armed Forces Day and Corpus Christi on the 15th. So in military and in religion we turn a corner and we transit.

In the publishing world too; August and September are important months. I believe there is a festival around love and that is directed by one Marieke Hardy.

I was always in a flurry and hurry for a good cause. In that case it was 1 September.