Brunch and the Bentleigh festival

Had lunch with Berley thios morning down the The Spotted Dog in Bentleigh. We were also hoping that Shaz would come along, but her father in law has had some health problems and so it was a long shot :(
We didn't realise at the time but the Bentleigh festival was on today, so Centre rd was blocked off for the exact section we needed to traverse, so we both had to do a big detour around the blockage.

Brunch was nice, the service was a smidge slow, but they were pretty busy, so we put up with it :) Berley and I discussed many things, including the fact that she's taken her belly ring out to avoid problems as she gets more gravid, and the appearance of her baby on the ultrasound (the spine looking like a crinkle cut chip)
Then we took a walk down to the festival to see what was going on, and it was a very strange place indeed. It seemed innocuous enough, My Whippy, sausage sizzle, a few marquees spread down the street, with banners proclaiming them as being associated local services (this is a local festival, for local people, there's nothing for you here!). However, once we got a bit closer things took a turn for the surreal :)

When you have the local law firm hand you a showbag, with brochures and lollies, you know you're in trouble, and no amount of camel rides can dig you out of it. There was also an appearance of the Frankston pipe band, as recognised by Berley, a Frankstonite from way back, but that was soon drowned out by the Police band rendition of The Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get Retarded". Frankly, they succeeded. :)

The highlight of weirdness was when we saw a 'country' band playing. One guitarist was affecting the 'Chad Morgan' look (wide brim hat, folded up at front, big flat buck-toothed grin, with teeth missing) and one of the vocalists was going for the Larry Adler look and I'm glad to see he hasn't let Larry's death stand in his way :) The more disconcerting fact was that they were playing somewhat ribald numbers to a crowd that included some very young children. The last song we heard from them was written on honour of Kylie's famous bum ("Jason Donovan and Michael Hutchens, had it in their clutches"), and as we left they were down in the audience having a 4 year old yell out the catch phrase "kylie's arse" repeatedly. very weird :)