Voting is obligatory in Australia, which is just as well. Because the policies offered by the two main parties are so weak and illogical that I’d wager that most people wouldn’t bother voting if they didn’t have to.
I’ve heard the parties here being described as being similar to two big department stores (Myer and David Jones in the Australian context). The both sell the same things and constantly have a sale on. To labour a simile, I’d say they both package things up that are a disappointment when you get them home.
On one side you have the Liberals who aren’t really liberal at all. They are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun and the rantings of their lug eared leader make Margaret Thatcher look like Mother Theresa. The highlight of their campaign was to “Stop the Boats” as though a Spanish Armada was en route to the Australian coast rather than the occasional rickety fishing boat filled with desperate Afghanis. Australia is willing to spend billions on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan but is not willing to spend a fraction of this amount helping the unfortunate victims of that conflict.
However, their opponents in the Labor Party are not able to make capital out of this issue as the only difference between them and the Liberals is that Labor wants to send the boat people to East Timor, whereas the Liberals chosen destination is Nauru. East Timor is an expert on refugees of course, although mainly in the export of them. The Liberals have chosen Nauru because it’s one of the few countries in the world that has not signed the United Nations convention on refugees. Thus Australia, which is a signatory, would be able to sidestep its legal and moral responsibilities.
And the very fact that hardly anyone has mentioned this moral bankruptcy in the course of the election campaign is as good an indication as any of the hollowness of current Australian politics.
Labor, as I mention above, don’t have the moral high ground. They have also betrayed their working class roots and are now a party focused on protecting powerful interest groups. They even spell their name in the American way and not the traditional British/Irish way of “Labour”. They say this is because of their roots in the Victorian mining boom of the 19th Century. Californian immigrants brought an American tradition of Trade Unionism and the Labor Party was born.
Yet I’m inclined to think that they owe their spelling to their devotion to American politics with its concentration on Presidential figures and policies aimed at their biggest donors. I have lived under a Labor/Labour government for the first time in my life these past three years, but I have to say it has been a disappointment. They kept the country out of the global recession and made some symbolic gestures rather than addressing endemic poverty of the indigenous people. But in getting rid of their leader three months ago, they showed that they are as power hungry as their opponents. Government for the sake of it, rather than Government for the people seems to be their motto.
As I can’t vote in elections here, I’ve taken it upon myself to question those who can about the intricacies of the Australian voting system. Sadly I haven’t found anyone who is up to this task. While voting is obligatory, understanding the process isn’t.
As a result, people stand outside election booths handing out “how to vote cards” which sounds like the sort of thing that Stalin used to do. The reason for this is that Australians are obliged to complete a preference for every candidate, even when 30 or so are standing. This adds nothing to the election result but allows election nerds (of which I confess to being a paid up member) to calculate a “two party preferred” vote. God help them if the Greens ever make the breakthrough and become a viable third party. Australia may have to come up with the world’s first three dimensional voting card.
The senate election is particularly strange, as people vote for it on the same day. It makes you wonder why they don’t just have one house. It should be said in their defence that at least they allow people to vote in this election, unlike in Britain where the practice is typically to inherit a seat in the House of Lords, passed down from your ancestor who acted as muscle for Oliver Cromwell. Alternatively, you are gifted a seat by the Prime Minister or you happen to be a Protestant Bishop. This in a country that pretends to be multi cultural and lectures Ireland on its Priest influenced culture.
We Irish aren’t much better mind you. We have an Upper House or Senate which performs a function that is about as clear to the public as the monthly management meetings at Al Qaeda. The election process to this house was determined in the 1930s when the world, it is fair to say, had a casual attitude towards democracy. The founding fathers wanted a virtuous assembly of artists and professors who would sit in patrician judgement over the foolish and uneducated laws passed by the lower house.
We Irish must be the only people in the world who elect artists to our parliament as a matter of constitutional law and allow University graduates to vote in Senate elections, but not factory workers. Democracy, as Winston Churchill said is the least bad form of Government.
After all the votes have been counted in Australia, the result is unclear. The two main parties have finished with exactly the same number of seats, which is sweetly ironic given their identical policies and campaign strategies. Thus, they are both now engaged in that strange courtship ritual peculiar to hung parliaments. Both parties are busy trying to charm the same Greens and Independents that they spent the last six weeks attacking in the campaign.
Soon it will all be settled and we can return to having the civil servants run the country. Nauru or East Timor will get richer but pretty much everything else will stay the same.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Monday, 2 August 2010
In Memory of my Mother
Dear Mam,
You’re at rest now and the memory thief can no longer burgle your thoughts. I’d like to think that you are in a better place but to be honest, the hand of fate that God dealt you these past few years has tested my faith. All your obituaries spoke about your daily Mass attendance and unquestioning devotion. I’m not so sure about the unquestioning bit, but you weren’t rewarded for making that daily pilgrimage to St. Malacys.
You would tell me of course that your reward will be in heaven and no doubt you’re up there now telling the big fellow that he’s sitting in your chair. What those obituaries don’t say of course is that you always had questions about the doctrine we were forced to ingest in the old Ireland of Police and Priests.
You never accepted any of it at face value and had a healthy disrespect for the aristocracy of the church. We were the first family to leave the Papal Mass in Drogheda in 1979 because you were annoyed that the Pope was getting carried around in a chair while you had to sit in a field.
And every time that Pope would issue a pompous missive on the subject of divorce or abortion, you would throw your eyes to heaven and say, “What would a man know about those things”? When I’d point out that Jesus was a man, you’d say “Sure he lived at home with his Mother until he was thirty. Where do you think he learned everything he knew”?
At least I got to say goodbye before you went. I don’t think you’d have forgiven me if I didn’t. The first time we said goodbye was when I left home to move to London. You kept your emotions in check until I was about to pass through the departure gate. Finally you cracked and hugged me in your famous nicotine tinged embrace.
“Why in God’s name do you want to go to that God forsaken nation of child molesters”?
I sensed in your voice a hint of envy that you weren’t leaving with me. You lived all your life in a small Irish town while your siblings and then your children spread their wings to the four corners of the globe. I can’t help feeling that you felt suffocated by your place in life, as though you were in a village surrounded by a deep and forbidding wood. You knew however, that a light shone beyond those woods and you wanted to go and see what makes it shine.
You certainly bolted from that small town whenever you could, hitting the beaches of Southern Europe each summer. You even ventured to Eastern Europe before the wall came down which was tremendously cool to the teenage communist within me.
I met you in Sydney and Switzerland and the back streets of London’s Chinatown. You treated each as your personal fiefdom, finding the best place to sneak a smoke and a crafty glass of wine. It’s ironic that your last big trip was to the USA around the time of September 11th, 2001. In hindsight, the memory thief was already nibbling away at you then and if the whole world changed on that fateful day, then the same could be said for you.
You left Boston on the morning of Sept. 11th in a car heading for Niagara Falls with Dad and mad Uncle Brendan. You were probably the last people in the Northern hemisphere to hear that day’s news, because Brendan insisted on playing 1950’s Irish show band music all the way there in the car.
The events of that day have become legendary in our family. Your spur of the moment trip across the Canadian border without passports on a day when America was sealing its borders. Your insistence to the yanks that you should be allowed into their country when nobody else was (apart from some intrepid Mexican illegals) or your lack of understanding as to what all the fuss about. All of it proves that were unique and lived life on your terms.
It’s not just your sense of humour that I’ll miss. You were the typical Irish mammy is so many ways. Proud of all my achievements to the outside world but ready to put me in my place whenever I got ahead of myself. “I could bucken buy and sell you all” you’d say in that desire to show your self-confidence and to demonstrate that you would never commit the venal sin of cursing but could come up with a ready substitute.
I’ll also miss the cup of tea you used to offer me when I’d enter the sitting room, even when I’d only been to the toilet to relieve myself after the five cups of tea you had already offered that day. Tea was your currency and your way of saying hello.
You loved your tea as well of course and it was a challenge to all your children to make it to the correct strength and with just the right amount of Marvel creamer. You spurned milk because you were always watching your weight. How cruel then that God decided that you couldn’t eat and when you passed you were down to a weight you probably desired all your life but were not in a position to appreciate it.
We liked you the way you were though Mam. Always ready with a hug or a piece of advice. When I went through the pain of a break up in 1994, you were the only one who spoke sense to me and stepped beyond the clichés of “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “it’s probably for the best”. You reminded me of how I’d been raised and that I was entitled to my feelings and you also were to yours.
You were an ordinary Irish woman, but you will always be extraordinary to me. Enjoy the big lie in.
Rest in Peace.
You’re at rest now and the memory thief can no longer burgle your thoughts. I’d like to think that you are in a better place but to be honest, the hand of fate that God dealt you these past few years has tested my faith. All your obituaries spoke about your daily Mass attendance and unquestioning devotion. I’m not so sure about the unquestioning bit, but you weren’t rewarded for making that daily pilgrimage to St. Malacys.
You would tell me of course that your reward will be in heaven and no doubt you’re up there now telling the big fellow that he’s sitting in your chair. What those obituaries don’t say of course is that you always had questions about the doctrine we were forced to ingest in the old Ireland of Police and Priests.
You never accepted any of it at face value and had a healthy disrespect for the aristocracy of the church. We were the first family to leave the Papal Mass in Drogheda in 1979 because you were annoyed that the Pope was getting carried around in a chair while you had to sit in a field.
And every time that Pope would issue a pompous missive on the subject of divorce or abortion, you would throw your eyes to heaven and say, “What would a man know about those things”? When I’d point out that Jesus was a man, you’d say “Sure he lived at home with his Mother until he was thirty. Where do you think he learned everything he knew”?
At least I got to say goodbye before you went. I don’t think you’d have forgiven me if I didn’t. The first time we said goodbye was when I left home to move to London. You kept your emotions in check until I was about to pass through the departure gate. Finally you cracked and hugged me in your famous nicotine tinged embrace.
“Why in God’s name do you want to go to that God forsaken nation of child molesters”?
I sensed in your voice a hint of envy that you weren’t leaving with me. You lived all your life in a small Irish town while your siblings and then your children spread their wings to the four corners of the globe. I can’t help feeling that you felt suffocated by your place in life, as though you were in a village surrounded by a deep and forbidding wood. You knew however, that a light shone beyond those woods and you wanted to go and see what makes it shine.
You certainly bolted from that small town whenever you could, hitting the beaches of Southern Europe each summer. You even ventured to Eastern Europe before the wall came down which was tremendously cool to the teenage communist within me.
I met you in Sydney and Switzerland and the back streets of London’s Chinatown. You treated each as your personal fiefdom, finding the best place to sneak a smoke and a crafty glass of wine. It’s ironic that your last big trip was to the USA around the time of September 11th, 2001. In hindsight, the memory thief was already nibbling away at you then and if the whole world changed on that fateful day, then the same could be said for you.
You left Boston on the morning of Sept. 11th in a car heading for Niagara Falls with Dad and mad Uncle Brendan. You were probably the last people in the Northern hemisphere to hear that day’s news, because Brendan insisted on playing 1950’s Irish show band music all the way there in the car.
The events of that day have become legendary in our family. Your spur of the moment trip across the Canadian border without passports on a day when America was sealing its borders. Your insistence to the yanks that you should be allowed into their country when nobody else was (apart from some intrepid Mexican illegals) or your lack of understanding as to what all the fuss about. All of it proves that were unique and lived life on your terms.
It’s not just your sense of humour that I’ll miss. You were the typical Irish mammy is so many ways. Proud of all my achievements to the outside world but ready to put me in my place whenever I got ahead of myself. “I could bucken buy and sell you all” you’d say in that desire to show your self-confidence and to demonstrate that you would never commit the venal sin of cursing but could come up with a ready substitute.
I’ll also miss the cup of tea you used to offer me when I’d enter the sitting room, even when I’d only been to the toilet to relieve myself after the five cups of tea you had already offered that day. Tea was your currency and your way of saying hello.
You loved your tea as well of course and it was a challenge to all your children to make it to the correct strength and with just the right amount of Marvel creamer. You spurned milk because you were always watching your weight. How cruel then that God decided that you couldn’t eat and when you passed you were down to a weight you probably desired all your life but were not in a position to appreciate it.
We liked you the way you were though Mam. Always ready with a hug or a piece of advice. When I went through the pain of a break up in 1994, you were the only one who spoke sense to me and stepped beyond the clichés of “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “it’s probably for the best”. You reminded me of how I’d been raised and that I was entitled to my feelings and you also were to yours.
You were an ordinary Irish woman, but you will always be extraordinary to me. Enjoy the big lie in.
Rest in Peace.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
I measure out my Life in World Cups- Part 2
The World Cup has started and although Australia is one of the participants, you wouldn’t exactly say that excitement has reached fever pitch here. It’s more like a small cold with the occasional sniffle. Losing 4-0 in their first game hasn’t helped of course. The Aussies like winners and have expectations way above their ability. A trait they clearly learned from the English.
I kicked off an office sweep last week, drawing displeasure from my boss who thought the reference to France as being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys was not in the spirit of an International Banks diversity policy. He didn’t mind my reference to the English as whinging Poms, but that’s Australian double standards for you.
I think it’s fair to say that if Australia was not taking part, then interest here would be confined to those of us brought up in a European soccer culture and the young Asian fraternity who have been brainwashed by the Murdoch driven promotion of the English Premier League. Apart from Kiwi’s of course. There is a huge population of New Zealanders in Melbourne who are discovering the beauty of the World Game, helped of course by a last minute goal against Slovakia in their first game and an even better performance against Italy. I would mock their jubilance in achieving mere draws, but as the Irish are still celebrating the time we hammered England 1-1 in the 1990 World Cup, any giggling by me at New Zealand would be as hypocritical as Thierry Henry appealing for hand ball. And he would never do that, would he?
The past of course is another country. In 1994, that country was the USA. I was supposed to go, but impending nuptials got in the way. We kicked off that World Cup with a win against Italy. It lives in Irish folklore with the English game in Stuttgart in 1988 but doesn’t have the same pleasant memories for me. I watched the game in a house in Limerick in the heartland of Irish Rugby. In much the same way as many Kiwis are doing now, Ireland’s rugby fraternity jumped on the football bandwagon in 1994 without bothering to school up on such trivialities as rules and tactics. While the country enjoyed the match, I had to listen to a bunch of middle class oafs with no necks and cauliflower ears call for line outs every time the ball went out of play and triumphantly cheer every time we won a corner.
We beat Italy that day of course in Giants Stadium, New York. Paul McGrath played with a dead arm but still mastered the Latin millionaires that adorned the Italian side. Ray Houghton scored a freakish goal that made us dream about winning the World Cup. But it was all downhill from there. As was my impending nuptials as it happened. Our football woes were caused by FIFA dictating that we should play our remaining games in Florida, which in June is a smouldering cauldron with the sort of clamminess that could drown a fish. In short, it’s probably the last place freckly, pale skinned Irish people should play football.
Not only that, but they made us play at lunchtime when only mad dogs would be found on the Tampa streets.
I called my Mother to discuss tactics before the Dutch game in the last 16. She was a late convert to the beautiful game but like many Irish mammies, she was seduced by the dulcet Northern tones of Ireland’s then manager, Jack Charlton. She was pessimistic about Ireland’s chances. “It’s not the hate that will get them. It’s the humiliation”. In the end, it was heat and humidity that got them, but as the team that Jack built fractured at the end of that tournament, I can’t help thinking that my mother was right all along.
By the time France 1998 came around, I was in Ireland, surfing on the back of the Celtic Tiger (who was just a cub back then). I had just joined my current employer and was given the task of migrating data to the US. This meant dealing with technicians in India and Hong Kong, who were blissfully unaware that the festival of football was underway. They pencilled in a call for the afternoon of the day that the final was being played, to my great annoyance. But luckily we wrapped things up with an hour to spare. Our final conversation that night was around our plans for dinner.
I told the Asians on the call that they should head out and have an Irish, as I was tossing up between having a Chinese or an Indian. The joke flew over their heads unfortunately, but they felt a vague sense of being offended. That began a long history of me putting my foot in it at work, which has lasted right up to these games.
2002 was the year Ireland split between the Keane and McCarthy camps. I was a McCartyite, loyal to the conservative traditions of servitude and class order. If football is war without guns, then we fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate that long, hot summer. Eight years on, I’m still not sure what the argument was about. Lack of balls was mentioned at the time and in fairness that seems an appropriate metaphor.
I started a new job in 2006, one that would eventually lead me here to Australia. Strangely I remember very little of that summer’s World Cup, while I can still name the Zairian midfield from 1974. Maybe football has become less important to me or perhaps my brain had little else to think about back then. But those long ago games seemed filled with spectacular goals, vibrant green pitches and scantily clad Brazilian girls in the stands. World Cups now seem to be filled with dodgy penalties, bizarre refereeing decisions and people clad in overcoats in the stands. Is that all 2010 will be remembered for? Or is there a kid somewhere eating apple tart in his auntie’s house and memorising the middle names of the Honduran squad?
I kicked off an office sweep last week, drawing displeasure from my boss who thought the reference to France as being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys was not in the spirit of an International Banks diversity policy. He didn’t mind my reference to the English as whinging Poms, but that’s Australian double standards for you.
I think it’s fair to say that if Australia was not taking part, then interest here would be confined to those of us brought up in a European soccer culture and the young Asian fraternity who have been brainwashed by the Murdoch driven promotion of the English Premier League. Apart from Kiwi’s of course. There is a huge population of New Zealanders in Melbourne who are discovering the beauty of the World Game, helped of course by a last minute goal against Slovakia in their first game and an even better performance against Italy. I would mock their jubilance in achieving mere draws, but as the Irish are still celebrating the time we hammered England 1-1 in the 1990 World Cup, any giggling by me at New Zealand would be as hypocritical as Thierry Henry appealing for hand ball. And he would never do that, would he?
The past of course is another country. In 1994, that country was the USA. I was supposed to go, but impending nuptials got in the way. We kicked off that World Cup with a win against Italy. It lives in Irish folklore with the English game in Stuttgart in 1988 but doesn’t have the same pleasant memories for me. I watched the game in a house in Limerick in the heartland of Irish Rugby. In much the same way as many Kiwis are doing now, Ireland’s rugby fraternity jumped on the football bandwagon in 1994 without bothering to school up on such trivialities as rules and tactics. While the country enjoyed the match, I had to listen to a bunch of middle class oafs with no necks and cauliflower ears call for line outs every time the ball went out of play and triumphantly cheer every time we won a corner.
We beat Italy that day of course in Giants Stadium, New York. Paul McGrath played with a dead arm but still mastered the Latin millionaires that adorned the Italian side. Ray Houghton scored a freakish goal that made us dream about winning the World Cup. But it was all downhill from there. As was my impending nuptials as it happened. Our football woes were caused by FIFA dictating that we should play our remaining games in Florida, which in June is a smouldering cauldron with the sort of clamminess that could drown a fish. In short, it’s probably the last place freckly, pale skinned Irish people should play football.
Not only that, but they made us play at lunchtime when only mad dogs would be found on the Tampa streets.
I called my Mother to discuss tactics before the Dutch game in the last 16. She was a late convert to the beautiful game but like many Irish mammies, she was seduced by the dulcet Northern tones of Ireland’s then manager, Jack Charlton. She was pessimistic about Ireland’s chances. “It’s not the hate that will get them. It’s the humiliation”. In the end, it was heat and humidity that got them, but as the team that Jack built fractured at the end of that tournament, I can’t help thinking that my mother was right all along.
By the time France 1998 came around, I was in Ireland, surfing on the back of the Celtic Tiger (who was just a cub back then). I had just joined my current employer and was given the task of migrating data to the US. This meant dealing with technicians in India and Hong Kong, who were blissfully unaware that the festival of football was underway. They pencilled in a call for the afternoon of the day that the final was being played, to my great annoyance. But luckily we wrapped things up with an hour to spare. Our final conversation that night was around our plans for dinner.
I told the Asians on the call that they should head out and have an Irish, as I was tossing up between having a Chinese or an Indian. The joke flew over their heads unfortunately, but they felt a vague sense of being offended. That began a long history of me putting my foot in it at work, which has lasted right up to these games.
2002 was the year Ireland split between the Keane and McCarthy camps. I was a McCartyite, loyal to the conservative traditions of servitude and class order. If football is war without guns, then we fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate that long, hot summer. Eight years on, I’m still not sure what the argument was about. Lack of balls was mentioned at the time and in fairness that seems an appropriate metaphor.
I started a new job in 2006, one that would eventually lead me here to Australia. Strangely I remember very little of that summer’s World Cup, while I can still name the Zairian midfield from 1974. Maybe football has become less important to me or perhaps my brain had little else to think about back then. But those long ago games seemed filled with spectacular goals, vibrant green pitches and scantily clad Brazilian girls in the stands. World Cups now seem to be filled with dodgy penalties, bizarre refereeing decisions and people clad in overcoats in the stands. Is that all 2010 will be remembered for? Or is there a kid somewhere eating apple tart in his auntie’s house and memorising the middle names of the Honduran squad?
Thursday, 3 June 2010
I Measure out my Life in World Cups - Part 1
The World Cup will shortly be among us and plans are being made in Australia for how best to enjoy an event which will take place in the middle of night. The hype is not quite on a par with Ireland in 1990 but a win or two will get the Aussies on board. They have a winning mentality which can only be fed by success.
I will be keeping a fond eye on New Zealand, if only to encourage my significant other to watch some late night TV. Watching England lose on penalties and seeing those cheating frog eating surrender monkeys lose are also high on my wish list.
But I get another feeling every time a World Cup comes round. I remember past competitions as milestones in my life, as though my very existence was measured in four year increments. My first was 1966 when I guess I was just learning to walk. I thankfully slept through England’s thieving of the trophy, although I’ve had to hear about it ever since. As an Irish comic said “the only plus side out of England winning this year’s World Cup is that it might finally get them to stop talking about 1966!”
1970 is my first memory of going to the cinema. They made a movie of that year’s World Cup in Mexico and Dad brought me and my brother along to see it. It’s also my only memory of being at the cinema with my Dad (he has always been an outdoor’s kind of guy). We had a black and white TV back then and the movie opened my eyes to technicolour. I can still see the vibrant emerald shades of the Axteca Stadium pitch and the bright yellow shirts of the triumphant Brazilians.
Four years later, we still had that old black and white TV and I had become a nine year football obsessive. Two days before the final, I received the welcome news that my Aunt Winnie had invested some bingo winnings in a new colour TV. My Dad and I were invited to watch the sour Germans take on the flying Dutchmen in the final and to feast on Aunt Winnie’s apple tarts (delicious on the lips but ran through you like Usain Bolt).
I hassled Dad all the way home to buy a colour TV and he humoured me. Sadly, back then I knew a lot more about football than I did about economics. But I’m pleased that the two most colourful memories from my childhood where in his company.
In 1978 my parents bought a portable television. We had moved into the colour world since the previous world cup, but my mother saw this as her personal domain. My abiding memory of 1978 is sitting in the kitchen, perched on high stools with my Dad and brother and watching football on that tiny black and white portable. My mother sat alone in the next room, reading a Mills and Boons novel and occasionally casting an eye on the soap opera on screen.
We did get her to watch one match during those finals which was interrupted by a powerful thunderstorm. My mother looked up from her Mills and Boons novel and saw the rain on TV. She instantly leapt up and raced out to the back yard to bring in the washing. When she came back, my Dad pointed out that the game was being played in Buenos Aires and we were thousands of miles away in Dundalk. “That must be one hell of a cloud” he said, which was just about the funniest thing I remember from the seventies.
I sat my school leaving exams in 1982 and went through the torment of trying to study while my brother mocked me by cheering every two minutes downstairs. I’d race down in the expectation of seeing a goal, only to see him rolling around laughing while on screen a South American footballer was rolling around in feigned injury and no goal was in sight. I still blame the Italy V Brazil quarter final for my spectacularly ordinary results.
I was 21 in 1986, full of bravado and cheap Northern Ireland beer. I’d fought a battle with my mother for years to gain better access to the television, particularly when football was on. She helped enormously in 1986 by dragging my Dad to America for a month while the finals were on. It meant he got to see no football and I got to see as much as I wanted.
In the summer of 1986 I was standing on the platform of the railway station of life. I had already bought my ticket and knew my final destination. We laughed, we danced, we snogged, and we squeezed the last juice out of our childhood. It was our last chance before the train left and we took it with enthusiasm. Innocence wasn't so much lost that summer; it was traded in for the rites of passage to a new life. It was the best of times and our lives were changing forever before our very eyes. 1986 is also famous for the fantastic goal that Maradona scored against England and the second one he scored that day wasn’t bad either.
Unless Ireland wins a World Cup, 1990 will forever be the Daddy of all tournaments. It was so wonderfully innocent, so new and exciting, so passionate and drunken. We wore tight fitting polyester shirts and didn’t care. We inflated plastic bananas (for reasons that still escape me); hung bunting from our houses and generally lost the run of ourselves. And best of all, I got to go. I stood in that stadium in Genoa when we beat Romania on penalties, I sang my heart out in Rome when we lost to Italy and sat outside the Palermo ground when we qualified for the second round and gave my best scarf to a passing Italian because the world had aligned at that very moment with a beautiful kiss of serendipity.
I fell in love for the first time just before that World Cup started and that love lasted until 1994, when it fell apart around the same time as Jack Charlton’s Irish team at that year’s finals. But that’s another story and only proves that love and football can be cruel mistresses.
To be continued…..
I will be keeping a fond eye on New Zealand, if only to encourage my significant other to watch some late night TV. Watching England lose on penalties and seeing those cheating frog eating surrender monkeys lose are also high on my wish list.
But I get another feeling every time a World Cup comes round. I remember past competitions as milestones in my life, as though my very existence was measured in four year increments. My first was 1966 when I guess I was just learning to walk. I thankfully slept through England’s thieving of the trophy, although I’ve had to hear about it ever since. As an Irish comic said “the only plus side out of England winning this year’s World Cup is that it might finally get them to stop talking about 1966!”
1970 is my first memory of going to the cinema. They made a movie of that year’s World Cup in Mexico and Dad brought me and my brother along to see it. It’s also my only memory of being at the cinema with my Dad (he has always been an outdoor’s kind of guy). We had a black and white TV back then and the movie opened my eyes to technicolour. I can still see the vibrant emerald shades of the Axteca Stadium pitch and the bright yellow shirts of the triumphant Brazilians.
Four years later, we still had that old black and white TV and I had become a nine year football obsessive. Two days before the final, I received the welcome news that my Aunt Winnie had invested some bingo winnings in a new colour TV. My Dad and I were invited to watch the sour Germans take on the flying Dutchmen in the final and to feast on Aunt Winnie’s apple tarts (delicious on the lips but ran through you like Usain Bolt).
I hassled Dad all the way home to buy a colour TV and he humoured me. Sadly, back then I knew a lot more about football than I did about economics. But I’m pleased that the two most colourful memories from my childhood where in his company.
In 1978 my parents bought a portable television. We had moved into the colour world since the previous world cup, but my mother saw this as her personal domain. My abiding memory of 1978 is sitting in the kitchen, perched on high stools with my Dad and brother and watching football on that tiny black and white portable. My mother sat alone in the next room, reading a Mills and Boons novel and occasionally casting an eye on the soap opera on screen.
We did get her to watch one match during those finals which was interrupted by a powerful thunderstorm. My mother looked up from her Mills and Boons novel and saw the rain on TV. She instantly leapt up and raced out to the back yard to bring in the washing. When she came back, my Dad pointed out that the game was being played in Buenos Aires and we were thousands of miles away in Dundalk. “That must be one hell of a cloud” he said, which was just about the funniest thing I remember from the seventies.
I sat my school leaving exams in 1982 and went through the torment of trying to study while my brother mocked me by cheering every two minutes downstairs. I’d race down in the expectation of seeing a goal, only to see him rolling around laughing while on screen a South American footballer was rolling around in feigned injury and no goal was in sight. I still blame the Italy V Brazil quarter final for my spectacularly ordinary results.
I was 21 in 1986, full of bravado and cheap Northern Ireland beer. I’d fought a battle with my mother for years to gain better access to the television, particularly when football was on. She helped enormously in 1986 by dragging my Dad to America for a month while the finals were on. It meant he got to see no football and I got to see as much as I wanted.
In the summer of 1986 I was standing on the platform of the railway station of life. I had already bought my ticket and knew my final destination. We laughed, we danced, we snogged, and we squeezed the last juice out of our childhood. It was our last chance before the train left and we took it with enthusiasm. Innocence wasn't so much lost that summer; it was traded in for the rites of passage to a new life. It was the best of times and our lives were changing forever before our very eyes. 1986 is also famous for the fantastic goal that Maradona scored against England and the second one he scored that day wasn’t bad either.
Unless Ireland wins a World Cup, 1990 will forever be the Daddy of all tournaments. It was so wonderfully innocent, so new and exciting, so passionate and drunken. We wore tight fitting polyester shirts and didn’t care. We inflated plastic bananas (for reasons that still escape me); hung bunting from our houses and generally lost the run of ourselves. And best of all, I got to go. I stood in that stadium in Genoa when we beat Romania on penalties, I sang my heart out in Rome when we lost to Italy and sat outside the Palermo ground when we qualified for the second round and gave my best scarf to a passing Italian because the world had aligned at that very moment with a beautiful kiss of serendipity.
I fell in love for the first time just before that World Cup started and that love lasted until 1994, when it fell apart around the same time as Jack Charlton’s Irish team at that year’s finals. But that’s another story and only proves that love and football can be cruel mistresses.
To be continued…..
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Leaving St Kilda
I’ve been busy recently, nursing a broken arm that it is as stubborn as a spoilt child in its efforts to get better and working twelve hours a day on a project that will save no hungry children nor cause any statues to be built to me in years to come but will merely oil the wheels of Capitalism a little more. I’ve also been looking for a new place to live so time has been as elusive as Osama Bin Laden.
That search at least came to an end today when my better half and I signed a lease on a chocolate box house in Carlton. It has everything we’ve been looking for. A kitchen to stretch my new found culinary skills, space to store the debris that life builds and a loft above the garage which will substitute for the shed I’ve been subconsciously searching for since I turned 35.
But the thrill of arriving necessarily includes the pain of departure and our move to Carlton will involve leaving St Kilda which has been my home since I arrived in Australia.
After we signed the lease, I jumped on the tram back to St Kilda and as it turned onto the esplanade I felt a sadness that was akin to the day I left Ireland in 2007. A pale winter sun hung low in the sky and sailing boats bobbed on the bay in a vast white sailed armada. My mind was drawn to many things I would miss about St Kilda, even though it would only be a tram ride away.
It’s nice to have a pub within 50 metres of my front door. When I got to Melbourne first, I chose to live in the suburb of St Kilda because it was beside the bay and seemed to have the sort of exciting takeaway food options that suited my then bachelor lifestyle. I didn’t factor in the multitude of pubs that St Kilda boasts, because being Irish I assumed that every suburb would be the same in this regard.
I’ve since discovered that I was very lucky in this respect, because I could very easily have found myself living in a place as dry as the Sahara desert. If you leave the City Centre and travel east, you’ll pass through endless suburbs boasting KFC and McDonalds outlets on every intersection but as few pubs as you’d find in Mecca.
Each local council apparently can designate their areas as ‘dry’ and the Mormons and Free Presbyterians have clearly done a great job stacking these councils.
My local is The Village Belle, a pub that evokes memories of Victorian bygone days when the parasol carrying gentry of Melbourne would come out to the seaside on a warm summer’s day and finish their day off with a cooling ale at the Belle. Now it is home to hundreds of Irish backpackers and steak connoisseurs. They do a damned fine steak and the only decent chips I’ve tasted in Australia to date. An Irish friend of mine once said that the only thing she misses about home is real chipper chips. Every time I have a meal in the Belle, I’m reminded of that.
I didn’t realise I liked Ice Cream until I came to Australia. When I was the kid, the ultimate sophistication in restaurant deserts was to offer a ‘galaxy of ice cream’. This always turned out to be a single scoop of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, as though those were the only flavours imaginable. When Dad treated us to a ‘slider’ on summer holidays, you might be lucky enough to get raspberry ripple or the glamorous ‘Neapolitan’. But nothing that would be memorable beyond the two weeks of our holidays.
Australia has taken this a lot further. It’s not only hot here for nine months of the year (which let’s face it is the time to be eating frozen products) but boasts a high number of Italian immigrants. As a happy result I now have three ice cream shops within walking distance of my apartment, all competing with each other for ever more exotic flavours.
My favourite shop is “7 Apples” who do a great line in mint and pistachio. They call these ‘Gelato’ which adds some mystery to the process, as though this is a superior product to simple Ice cream. I’m not convinced but it looks like I’ll be leaving St Kilda without ever solving this mystery.
On a hot night these ice cream shops on Acland Street are as busy as a Turkey seller on Christmas Eve. They are quieter now that the mercury has dropped but still popular among the weekend strollers and Europeans like me who find 19c to be positively balmy.
My doctor mightn’t agree but I think having a gourmet pizza restaurant across the street from your house is fantastic and has led me to dream that I live in downtown Manhattan or the back streets of Naples. I’ve eaten a Quattro Formaggi from there at least once a week for the last three years which are tasty as hell but are probably causing a traffic jam in my arteries as we speak.
Carlton however, is the home of the Italian community in Melbourne and hosts the famous Lygon Street. So I shouldn’t be short of pizza options anyway. But I will miss the place across the road, if only because I can get food there now without any verbal interaction. A simple raising of my right eyebrow and a casual nod of the head elicits a thumbs up and a tasty meal 15 minutes later.
But what I’ll miss most is the sea. St Kilda has a rubbish beach by Australian standards. It’s pretty much man made and rumoured to be littered with needles and condoms (although I’ve never seen any). But it is a beach none the less and a stroll along the esplanade in summer while the sun is setting over the bay is the most pleasant thing you can do without getting wet.
But as that sun sets, a new one is rising in Carlton.
That search at least came to an end today when my better half and I signed a lease on a chocolate box house in Carlton. It has everything we’ve been looking for. A kitchen to stretch my new found culinary skills, space to store the debris that life builds and a loft above the garage which will substitute for the shed I’ve been subconsciously searching for since I turned 35.
But the thrill of arriving necessarily includes the pain of departure and our move to Carlton will involve leaving St Kilda which has been my home since I arrived in Australia.
After we signed the lease, I jumped on the tram back to St Kilda and as it turned onto the esplanade I felt a sadness that was akin to the day I left Ireland in 2007. A pale winter sun hung low in the sky and sailing boats bobbed on the bay in a vast white sailed armada. My mind was drawn to many things I would miss about St Kilda, even though it would only be a tram ride away.
It’s nice to have a pub within 50 metres of my front door. When I got to Melbourne first, I chose to live in the suburb of St Kilda because it was beside the bay and seemed to have the sort of exciting takeaway food options that suited my then bachelor lifestyle. I didn’t factor in the multitude of pubs that St Kilda boasts, because being Irish I assumed that every suburb would be the same in this regard.
I’ve since discovered that I was very lucky in this respect, because I could very easily have found myself living in a place as dry as the Sahara desert. If you leave the City Centre and travel east, you’ll pass through endless suburbs boasting KFC and McDonalds outlets on every intersection but as few pubs as you’d find in Mecca.
Each local council apparently can designate their areas as ‘dry’ and the Mormons and Free Presbyterians have clearly done a great job stacking these councils.
My local is The Village Belle, a pub that evokes memories of Victorian bygone days when the parasol carrying gentry of Melbourne would come out to the seaside on a warm summer’s day and finish their day off with a cooling ale at the Belle. Now it is home to hundreds of Irish backpackers and steak connoisseurs. They do a damned fine steak and the only decent chips I’ve tasted in Australia to date. An Irish friend of mine once said that the only thing she misses about home is real chipper chips. Every time I have a meal in the Belle, I’m reminded of that.
I didn’t realise I liked Ice Cream until I came to Australia. When I was the kid, the ultimate sophistication in restaurant deserts was to offer a ‘galaxy of ice cream’. This always turned out to be a single scoop of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, as though those were the only flavours imaginable. When Dad treated us to a ‘slider’ on summer holidays, you might be lucky enough to get raspberry ripple or the glamorous ‘Neapolitan’. But nothing that would be memorable beyond the two weeks of our holidays.
Australia has taken this a lot further. It’s not only hot here for nine months of the year (which let’s face it is the time to be eating frozen products) but boasts a high number of Italian immigrants. As a happy result I now have three ice cream shops within walking distance of my apartment, all competing with each other for ever more exotic flavours.
My favourite shop is “7 Apples” who do a great line in mint and pistachio. They call these ‘Gelato’ which adds some mystery to the process, as though this is a superior product to simple Ice cream. I’m not convinced but it looks like I’ll be leaving St Kilda without ever solving this mystery.
On a hot night these ice cream shops on Acland Street are as busy as a Turkey seller on Christmas Eve. They are quieter now that the mercury has dropped but still popular among the weekend strollers and Europeans like me who find 19c to be positively balmy.
My doctor mightn’t agree but I think having a gourmet pizza restaurant across the street from your house is fantastic and has led me to dream that I live in downtown Manhattan or the back streets of Naples. I’ve eaten a Quattro Formaggi from there at least once a week for the last three years which are tasty as hell but are probably causing a traffic jam in my arteries as we speak.
Carlton however, is the home of the Italian community in Melbourne and hosts the famous Lygon Street. So I shouldn’t be short of pizza options anyway. But I will miss the place across the road, if only because I can get food there now without any verbal interaction. A simple raising of my right eyebrow and a casual nod of the head elicits a thumbs up and a tasty meal 15 minutes later.
But what I’ll miss most is the sea. St Kilda has a rubbish beach by Australian standards. It’s pretty much man made and rumoured to be littered with needles and condoms (although I’ve never seen any). But it is a beach none the less and a stroll along the esplanade in summer while the sun is setting over the bay is the most pleasant thing you can do without getting wet.
But as that sun sets, a new one is rising in Carlton.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
The Great Divide between Left and Right
My Mother used to say that I was so awkward that sometimes my left arm didn’t know what my right arm was doing. She might be right, but for the last few weeks my right arm has been asking what my left arm has been doing all these years. Ever since I had my unplanned meeting with the bitumen on St Kilda Road, my right arm has decided to work to rule. He doesn’t mind lifting the odd cup of tea or tapping out a few keystrokes like this. But you only realise what your dominant arm does when it refuses to do anything in the bathroom involving effusions or teeth brushing.
This is where my left arm comes in. Or doesn’t as the case may be. I realise now that lefty has been taking it easy all these years. Happy to carry the odd suitcase or shopping bag, but only if righty is busy. Happy to do his share of scratching duties and to provide a target for my right hand during applause.
But he’s basically a free loader whose purpose in life seems merely to give me some symmetry.
Righty has done all the important things. Won all those arm wrestling contests that I’ve been secretly taking part in all my life (unbeaten in the last 20), flipped the remote control at home or the calculator at work to the immense annoyance of anyone I’ve ever lived with or shared office space with. And of course he’s the one who reaches out to shake hands with his corresponding appendage on anyone I meet. I’m not wearing a cast and give up on the sling after a week or so after discovering that it was pretty useless and wasn’t even enough to get somebody to offer me a seat on the tram.
As a result, it’s not clear to people I meet that righty is only operating at about 20% strength and in particular doesn’t like been turned clockwise. So when I meet people they tend to offer their right hand in salute and like a fool I tend to offer mine. It’s not doing a lot from my reputation that they first experience people have of me is a weak handshake and a grimace.
I’ve noticed that everyone offers the right hand when shaking; even people who are left handed in every other respect. It makes me realise that this might be the last injustice in the western world and I’ve played my part in perpetrating it. We’ve sorted out women’s equality and racism and yet the right hand is allowed to take a leading role in life while the left has to hide in the shadows, spending a lot of his life buried in a pocket while the right gets on with all the fun stuff.
For example, when I was a young fellow, trawling the discos of Dundalk in search of Northern Irish girls desperate to escape the troubles for a night and willing as a result to put up with my thick tongued mumbling, it was my right hand that partied. The dancing style of the day was minimalist. We’d sway gently to new romantic electro twaddle masquerading as music, with our left hand planted firmly in the front pocket of our skin tight cords, while our right arm moved from side to side with all the grace of a farmer herding cows towards the milking sheds. Righty got to lift all the beer we drank for Dutch courage and if I was lucky, got to hold the hand of some soft skinned daughter of Ulster as we queued for our coats.
Looking back I noticed right hand dominance in India. They have embraced a lot of things from the west like motor cars, mobile phones and the Internet. But they seem to have turned their back on knives and forks. The Chinese have an excuse for this, being able to do things with chopsticks that I would struggle to achieve with an entire kitchen of instruments. But the Indians still use their hands to eat, a practice that would be fine if their cuisine didn’t involve so much sauce and yogurt. When I dined with Indians I noticed that they only use their right hand when eating, which is impressive when cutting Nan bread for example. When I asked them why they didn’t let their left hand join in the fun, they looked at each other nervously before explaining that old leftie is used for another purpose which is not hygienically matched with eating.
It seems that toilet paper is the other western invention yet to be embraced in the sub continent.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be living in a left dominated world, while the right goes through an intensive training process. I’ve never broken a bone before so I don’t have much experience with the healing process. The fact that I feel no pain is a blessing but doesn’t help with getting the arm back in order. I often forget there is a problem for example and find myself in embarrassing situations, particularly ones that involve leverage like getting off a sofa or out of a bath.
I certainly won’t be taking righty for granted any more. Once he’s up and running again, I’m going to take him off the strenuous arm wrestling circuit and get him a nice massage every couple of weeks. It’s time I started spoiling my appendages. They are the only ones I’ve got.
Many people have asked me if my accident has made me re evaluate life. I’m not sure if it’s that profound. I certainly care more about my body now and I’ve lost that feeling of invulnerability which used to shadow me. We are brittle and when you bend us we break. Which reminds me of something else my Mother used to say: “Look after your body and your body will look after you”. I’d salute that, if only my arm was up to it.
This is where my left arm comes in. Or doesn’t as the case may be. I realise now that lefty has been taking it easy all these years. Happy to carry the odd suitcase or shopping bag, but only if righty is busy. Happy to do his share of scratching duties and to provide a target for my right hand during applause.
But he’s basically a free loader whose purpose in life seems merely to give me some symmetry.
Righty has done all the important things. Won all those arm wrestling contests that I’ve been secretly taking part in all my life (unbeaten in the last 20), flipped the remote control at home or the calculator at work to the immense annoyance of anyone I’ve ever lived with or shared office space with. And of course he’s the one who reaches out to shake hands with his corresponding appendage on anyone I meet. I’m not wearing a cast and give up on the sling after a week or so after discovering that it was pretty useless and wasn’t even enough to get somebody to offer me a seat on the tram.
As a result, it’s not clear to people I meet that righty is only operating at about 20% strength and in particular doesn’t like been turned clockwise. So when I meet people they tend to offer their right hand in salute and like a fool I tend to offer mine. It’s not doing a lot from my reputation that they first experience people have of me is a weak handshake and a grimace.
I’ve noticed that everyone offers the right hand when shaking; even people who are left handed in every other respect. It makes me realise that this might be the last injustice in the western world and I’ve played my part in perpetrating it. We’ve sorted out women’s equality and racism and yet the right hand is allowed to take a leading role in life while the left has to hide in the shadows, spending a lot of his life buried in a pocket while the right gets on with all the fun stuff.
For example, when I was a young fellow, trawling the discos of Dundalk in search of Northern Irish girls desperate to escape the troubles for a night and willing as a result to put up with my thick tongued mumbling, it was my right hand that partied. The dancing style of the day was minimalist. We’d sway gently to new romantic electro twaddle masquerading as music, with our left hand planted firmly in the front pocket of our skin tight cords, while our right arm moved from side to side with all the grace of a farmer herding cows towards the milking sheds. Righty got to lift all the beer we drank for Dutch courage and if I was lucky, got to hold the hand of some soft skinned daughter of Ulster as we queued for our coats.
Looking back I noticed right hand dominance in India. They have embraced a lot of things from the west like motor cars, mobile phones and the Internet. But they seem to have turned their back on knives and forks. The Chinese have an excuse for this, being able to do things with chopsticks that I would struggle to achieve with an entire kitchen of instruments. But the Indians still use their hands to eat, a practice that would be fine if their cuisine didn’t involve so much sauce and yogurt. When I dined with Indians I noticed that they only use their right hand when eating, which is impressive when cutting Nan bread for example. When I asked them why they didn’t let their left hand join in the fun, they looked at each other nervously before explaining that old leftie is used for another purpose which is not hygienically matched with eating.
It seems that toilet paper is the other western invention yet to be embraced in the sub continent.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be living in a left dominated world, while the right goes through an intensive training process. I’ve never broken a bone before so I don’t have much experience with the healing process. The fact that I feel no pain is a blessing but doesn’t help with getting the arm back in order. I often forget there is a problem for example and find myself in embarrassing situations, particularly ones that involve leverage like getting off a sofa or out of a bath.
I certainly won’t be taking righty for granted any more. Once he’s up and running again, I’m going to take him off the strenuous arm wrestling circuit and get him a nice massage every couple of weeks. It’s time I started spoiling my appendages. They are the only ones I’ve got.
Many people have asked me if my accident has made me re evaluate life. I’m not sure if it’s that profound. I certainly care more about my body now and I’ve lost that feeling of invulnerability which used to shadow me. We are brittle and when you bend us we break. Which reminds me of something else my Mother used to say: “Look after your body and your body will look after you”. I’d salute that, if only my arm was up to it.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
This Week's TV Guide
In April 1916, my grandfathers started walking to Dublin from opposite ends of Ireland. Their goal was to take part in the rising that had erupted in Ireland’s Capital over Easter weekend, when a rag bag bunch of Irishmen took on the mighty British Empire. Neither of them made it to Dublin as it happens and never met each other either.
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
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