So, two Belgians, a Hobbit & Ghandi walked into a bar…

Sounds like the opener to a joke; instead, it was our afternoon; swap the bar for West Cape Howe Winery in the wilds behind the town of Denmark; on the coast of Western Australia.

Finding ourselves at the musical afternoon hosted by the vineyard was a bit like being dropped into a local production of an obscure play without any context for the plot, or the characters.

The poster we’d seen had billed the musicians as “emerging acts.” Indeed. Local acts are always colourful: From the bashful redhead with his tie tucked into his shirt, nervously making jokes that only his mother (video taping proudly) thought were funny, to the tone-deaf, gravely voiced middle age man who had great lyrics, to the quad of Hobbits and Dwarves who looked like they’d stepped straight out of The Lord of The Rings set, with felted hats, pointed beards, instruments made out of pots and a dented trombone. They were fantastic.

The crowd was a portrait gallery in the making:

The spritely fairy princess, bedecked in layers of hot pink tulle and sparkles, with a lime green hula hoop instead of wings.

Four freckled teenage girls with long blonde hair twisted in a variety of ways wearing dresses straight out of a 1950’s postcard. One had a tan felt hat with a bent brim and bow, like the one I’ve seen a black and white print of my aunt wearing before I was born.

The hipster Dad with his pink floral bundle of wiggly joy: swinging her up and down, between his legs, over his shoulder. Sitting her on his head. Toddling her with two fingers through the grass.

The artsy matron with silvery forest queen hair and a billowing purple kaftan dress who waved at us when we came in. Later, she appeared, laughing, to explain that she’d mistaken me for someone else. That happens to me everywhere.

The fifty something mama with sea glass beads around the band of her floppy straw hat and a tiny sparkly nose ring, sharing a plate of cheese, crackers and olives with her grey stubbled beau and his piercing blue eyes. They sat across the table from us while her daughters buzzed in and out and around like blonde haired bees picking at the plate of food. He stuck his hand across the table and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Andy,” he announced, with that mesmerizing Australian lilt. “I know,” I smiled back at him, “You look just like him, only a little older.” He laughed.

The Belgian boys could not have looked any more classically Belg if they’d looked themselves up in the dictionary first. French, not Dutch, it was important for them to point out. They’re pretending to be backpackers and itinerant fruit pickers, but really they’ve got marketing degrees and are just seeing how the other half lives for a while. “It’s hell,” one confided, as he offered me a squashed strawberry from the morning’s picking, “Seconds,” he apologized, “But they’re free!”

The German hippies, complete with dreadlocks. It must be hard to be German and also a hippie; they are dichotomous in definition. He licked his browning teeth and discussed with the Belg boys where to find the magic mushrooms and how much is too much of the “deadly nightshade” when balancing the hallucinogenic and lethal properties.

A carbon copy of our little friend Noah at age three, bounced like a little butterball baby between tables, blue hat flopping like a flower blossom in a hard rain as he ran. Stopping occasionally to loosen his perpetual wedgie with great drama.

Ghandi was the cherry on top. Imagine the classic picture of the Indian hero, add a pair of John Lennon style sunglasses and a black Buddhist tattoo t-shirt along with a heavy necklace with enormous chunks of amber and jade around his scrawny, wrinkled little neck. Don’t forget the requisite silver bracelets which flash in the late afternoon sun with the classic Indian affectation of talking with his hands.

“I’m over a hundred years old, you know…” (if he was a day over sixty I’ll eat my hat) and then he set out to spin yarns that would make my Dad’s jaw drop in admiration.

“I’m the only bloody Indian in all of the Denmark region!” he punctuated some tale with, “Everybody knows me! Even the police! I can’t get away with bloody anything!”

It occurred to me that he’ll make an excellent character in a fiction story I’m contemplating. He’ll be the mysterious old sage who enters the story from nebulous origins and tells the history of the world from his first person experience.

Who knows, perhaps he really was over 100 years old and simply acquainted with Ponce de Leon from his participation in that famous quest. It could happen.

Perhaps my perceptions were just washed in three quarters of a bottle of a very fine blush moscato. Perhaps the best truths are just wrapped in colourful Indian silk ans layers of retelling.