A Day at the Beach

There are many great debates in life. Is our primary responsibility to ourselves or the wider world? Do we really exist? Is Man inherently greedy or has the world made him that way? And are Manchester United the hand tool of the devil, or is that just their nickname?

But the greatest debate of all is between Creationism and Evolution. George Bush and assorted other whackos believe that we were created 6,000 years ago, more or less fully formed. Dinosaurs it seems, are a relatively recent occurrence, only dieing out when they made the mistake of meeting in Ireland for a conference and were exposed to eight weeks of wet weather in a row, in what they had thought was summer.

I lean towards Evolution, if only because the preponderance of tattoos indicates that some people are still climbing the evolutionary tree. I believe that we came from the sea millions of years ago as slimy green amoeba, in the manner of that Guinness Ad. I felt some of this evolutionary trail in myself last Saturday morning as my condition resembled a slimy green amoeba in all but physical form. It seems strange then, that as soon as the sun comes out, we strive to insult our ancestors by diving back into the sea. Or not, as the case may be, because Melbournians seem to share a trait with their Irish cousins. If the mercury rises above 25c, they will tear down to the beach, change into ill-fitting swimming costumes, play father against son football, eat sand infested sandwiches and allow their dogs to defecate everywhere. Then they will climb back into their cars and drive home. Leaving the sea untouched and alone. Like someone’s tongue left hanging on the phone.

For the sea here shares an important quality with the one that cuddles Ireland. It’s bloody cold. Next stop from here is Antarctica after all. It’s not as cold as legend would suggest however. You don’t exactly have to crack the ice to get in or down a bottle of vodka for courage. But Melbourne beaches suffer in comparison to others found in Australia, such as in Queensland or even Sydney. Nevertheless, I prefer to make the most of what I’ve got and consider the best beach to be any I can walk to.

Elwood Beach fits that description. St Kilda beach is closer, but it suffers from an excess of skangers and sugar fuelled kids at the weekend. Elwood is altogether classier, boasting as it does a marina and a genuine Italian ice cream van. On Sunday the mercury hit 34c and a sirocco wind percolated off the Victorian plains. Apparently it was the 9th hottest October day in history here. It was certainly the hottest October day I’ve ever experienced, but I am of course a Northern Hemisphere flunkie.

So I donned my shorts and headed for the beach, to see if this legendary Australian surf culture lived up to expectations. Sadly it didn’t. When I got there I was attacked by several million flies that had clearly hibernated for the winter before hatching a plan to attack the first milk-bottle white homo-sapien they met. The only way you could get rid of them was to dive into the water, which makes it even more surprising that so few people were swimming. After I’d rid myself of the flies by achieving 30 seconds of mild hyperthermia in the ocean, I took to wondering why we are obsessed with the beach experience. Apart from the flies, you have to put up with sand getting everywhere. Every time you wash it out from between your toes, you realise that God wasn’t that clever in his design of the world. He made a purpose built sand washer called the ocean. And then put a load of sand between you and your shoes, so that your toes are full of the stuff the second after you step out of the sea.
Then there is the fact that there are more kids running around than at a Barney Concert and you’ll usually have at least one of them staring at you as you go through the spectacularly ungraceful process of trying to take wet shorts off and dry your nether regions on a packed beach. Add to this the blazing sun, from which the beach offers no shelter, the jellyfish and the fugitives from health inspection known as Hot Dog stands. And all in all, it can be a pretty soul destroying experience.

Yet every time the sun comes out and winks at us, we fall back into its spell. We join the traffic jams, we wear bad clothes, and we expose parts of our body to the public that we would normally reserve for lovers and doctors. It’s like an ancient God and we must respect its call. Like some primal pull towards an older and more spiritual home. Like our evolutionary fore-fathers are calling us back to where it all began.

Or maybe we just like looking at members of the opposite sex with little or no clothes on. But that great debate is for another day.

And now for the Weather

Four seasons in one day is a cliché popular in Ireland to describe the soul destroying weather and amongst Kiwi band Crowded House, to talk about the City they really come from. Which is of course Melbourne. Ireland has no real claim to this phrase, as it never snows in the morning only to be replaced by sunshine in the afternoon. In Ireland, the phrase really means, if it’s raining now, it probably won’t be in half and hour. It is much more accurate to say, “If you don’t like the weather, hang around for 20 minutes”. Although to be honest, you won’t like the weather much then either.

Crowded House wrote that song about Melbourne and after 3 months of living here, I can see why. Melbourne gets the kind of weather changes that make you wonder if it’s actually God’s chemistry set and he’s up there conducting weather system experiments that he might later try out on some rednecks in America and the Russian steppe. Thursday was the coldest day since I got here. An Antarctic wind was howling up Collins Street as though it was trying to deliver the body of Scott from it’s snowy grave. On Friday, the temperature rose by 10 degrees and the coats were put away again for the summer. On Saturday, the cold temperatures returned, only for the sun to re-appear on Sunday. In Ireland, there are only really two weather systems, Showery with sunny spells or Sunny spells with showers. In Melbourne, it is boiling hot or freezing cold, quite often within the same day. It is not unusual (among us new arrivals for example) to leave the house in the morning in a short sleeved shirt and sunnies, only to come back in the evening in a state of frozen shock as the walk from the tram is like trampling through a Siberian forest.

The forecast for this week is 27c today, 17c tomorrow and 27c again the next day. How is a fragile Irish metabolism supposed to cope with that? In the mornings, I find it hard enough to remember whether shoes go on before trousers or not, so I really struggle with planning what to wear for the day. It's usually inappropriate and I end up sweating or shivering. I'm sure people who see me regularly on the tram, think that I'm one of St.Kilda's many drug addicts. Which would make me feel at home on the tram, but that's another story.

One thing that is predicable in Australia (as with the rest of the Western World) is politics. Francis Fukayama wrote a famous book called "The End of History" and while I've never had the enthusiasm to read right wing triumphalism and don't have the energy to do so anyway, I have to depressingly admit that he has a point. Liberal Democracy has won the battle for hearts and minds in the west and nobody has the stomach for real change. Since communism collapsed in the 90's, western democracy has settled into a cosy collaboration with commerce and globalisation has ensured that the west at least, is protected from recession, because it will constantly find new markets in the developing world. It's as though the Americans finally found the secret to colonisation, 100 years after the European powers have given up on it. We no longer have recessions in the west, we just have economic ups and downs that are balanced by large scale labour movements too and from the east. So there is very little to get upset about and as people are fundamentally selfish, the status quo suits them just fine. So if a centrist party happened to be in power in the west 10 years ago, then chances are they still are. That's how Tony Blair hung on for so long in Britain and Bertie manages to stay in charge in Ireland. Australia has had John Howard (him of the bushy eyebrows) as premier for the past 10 years. And while it's difficult to find a person with a good word to say about him, he stands a good chance of being re-elected on November 24th. He called the election yesterday and as I'm a political anorak, this will give me the pleasure of observing two general elections in the same year. The Irish one in May was pretty disappointing (apart from being six feet away from Michael McDowell as he gave his retirement speech to the chorus of "Cheerio, Cheerio, Cheerio"). I had better hopes for the Australian version, as the Labour Party stand a genuine chance of winning. In all my life and travels, I've never lived under a Labour Government, so the prospects were quite exciting. Until I discovered that the Australian Labour Party is about as left wing as Mussolini.

In a desperate attempt to grab the middle ground, the Labour Party are now saying that they are most economically conservative party in the country. Well whippy doo. So much for taking control of the means of production and giving it back to the workers.

I had an excellent dinner in Melbourne on Saturday night and as you do, we got to talking about politics. One of the party was among the few to openly admit support for John Howard. He said that Communism had failed everywhere it was tried and therefore Capitalism was the only solution left. It won by default. Capitalism of course has failed more than half the world. But they live in China, Burma, the Middle East, Africa and South America. Capitalism in those places means working in a sweat shop or providing fodder to the War for Oil. We live in the west where everything is just rosey. No need to upset the applecart. And so, I confidently predict that John Howard will be returned to power on November 24th. Now if only the weather was so easy to predict.

The Girl in The Galleon Cafe

The St Kilda Galleon Café is busy on Saturday mornings. Something to do with their eclectic mix of student dining and hippy soul searching I think. We got the last two seats wedged between a gaggle of giggling teenagers and a dreadlocked couple dreaming of Jamaica and hallucinogenic drugs as they gazed into their skinny lattes.

You were wearing those oversized sunglasses that Victoria Beckham has cursed upon the world. They made your head look like a fly that had been magnified a trillion times, but in a nice way. When you took them off to peruse the menu, your eyes caught mine and I blinked first. An uncomfortable lump had developed in my throat and I felt the first trickle of perspiration on my brow. I fumbled over the menu, searching for something that would make me seem sophisticated and worldly wise. I settled for avocado and mushroom on Pied toast. I emphasised the Pied bit as though I was exclaiming to the café, “No ordinary toast for me, I have wandered the back streets of Marrakech and sipped coffee on the footpaths of Constantinople. And what’s more, my body is a temple, unsullied by the indignity of white bread and preservatives”.

But you paid no attention to my pathetic attempts at being cool. You could do it effortlessly. You asked for the low carb, vegan breakfast with rye bread and Guatemalan coffee as though it were cornflakes and you’d been having it every morning since you were three. The Café was noisy. Full of chat about backpacking around Europe, college exams and whether Brad Pitt would get back with Jennifer Aniston. We were aloof to such trivial matters. Sometimes words just aren’t enough.

Like most Australian cafes, the Galleon provides free newspapers for its patrons, but at the same time, they like to make a political statement. Rupert Murdoch dominates the newspaper industry in Australia in the manner of Charles Foster Kane, but without the chubby good looks. It’s difficult to pick up a newspaper here without reading a justification of the War on Terror or how immigrants are plague ridden welfare sponges. The Galleon is cheerfully left wing and stocks only non Murdoch papers. Which means you have to read “The Age” or stare at the hippy posters on the wall. The weekend edition was sitting between us and you instinctively moved for the Arts section as I reached for the Sports. I immediately regretted this, as I was keen that you didn’t see me as a brainless jock. But as you had already grabbed the Arts, I was left with little opportunity to paint myself as a sensitive intellectual. The Gardening and Motoring sections left little room to impress. I sensed that you were more concerned with saving the planet than a small garden and if you were forced to drive, it would be a Citroen 2CV. The car for people who hate cars.

When the drinks arrived, we both stretched for the milk and our fingers touched in one of those cinematic moments beloved of Hugh Grant. I giggled like a 12 year old girl at a Westlife concert and you smiled at my innocence. We read the paper and occasionally glanced up to smile at each other. But you seemed in another world. You would read something in the paper and then tilt your head upwards to contemplate. This showed the majestic arch of your neck and the tumbling mane of your flowing locks. I tried the same but only succeeded in looking like Mussolini in one of his more pompous moments.

My food arrived first and I became conscious of you watching me as I ate. Suddenly every chewing action became a thunderous movement of jaw muscles. My face stretching in obscene directions and my mouth dribbling and finding it impossible to keep itself closed. But thankfully you seemed uninterested at this point. An article on lesbian drama in the Melbourne Arts Festival seemed to hold your attention and made me momentarily worried that my attentions were focussed in the wrong direction. But then you caught my eye again and in that flirtatious look I knew that you were interested in men, if not necessarily in me.

The couple beside us were talking about “Australian Idol” and began every sentence with “Oh my God”. We looked at each other and raised our eyebrows in a solidarity moment of contempt. Your food finally arrived and the waiter made a lame joke about having to go to Guatemala for the coffee. You humoured him a with a smile but your lips registered enough annoyance to suggest that he wouldn’t be getting a tip. You ate your food like a ballerina would cross a stage. I was ashamed of my oafish munching and disappeared behind the paper.

When I looked up, you were at the counter paying your bill. As you left, you turned to look at me. You didn’t smile, you didn’t nod, you didn’t speak. You just looked.

And in that look, a thousand dreams went through my head, but none of them came true.

We had shared a breakfast. Two strangers in a busy café and we hadn’t said a word. I didn’t speak because I’m shy and clumsy. You didn’t speak because you are too cool for conversation. All I was left with was regret and indigestion. We search the world looking for love and dream up poetry and prose to charm them. And yet, when we find what we are looking for, how often does fear overpower our desire?

But sometimes, words just aren’t enough.

Tea and Sympathy

I guess I came here for change, the shock of the new and the chance to see how the rest of the world does things. But similarities are also comforting, like finding Irish breakfast tea and English premiership football on TV. It’s hard to describe the pleasure a good cup of tea brings and its place in Irish culture. Tea was of course invented by the Chinese as a way of purifying water (we Europeans came up with beer for the same purpose which is an interesting cultural comparison). It was then cultivated by the English colonists in South East Asia and exported through the trade routes to Europe. Indians drink their tea sweet with milk in the way Irish kids do until their mother weans them off the sugar. This is normally done by making 8 year olds give up sugar in their tea for lent. One of the few partnerships between spiritually and dental health I reckon.

The Chinese like to drink their tea light with warm water and a sprinkling of leaves, which makes it taste pretty much how it is written. It seems to be more about the serving than the taste, which is the polar opposite of the Irish experience. Unless of course you are serving tea to the parish priest in the “good” room at the front of the house which is reserved just for that purpose. In that case the best delft gets dusted down and the tea pot that Aunty Maggie gave you as a wedding present gets delicately removed from the cupboard where it has stood since the day of your nuptials.

But in the normal course of events, we Irish like to drink our tea strong and bitter with a touch of milk to take the cut off it. Grannies would make it like treacle, adding twelve large spoons of tea to the pot and leaving it to stew on the cooker for a day or two. You could generally stand a spoon upright in it and rich tea biscuits would not so much melt as spontaneously combust when coming into contact with it. But nothing could better a cup of that tea after a day spent in the summer sun on Granny’s farm. The standard greeting on entering an Irish home is not “how are you doing” but “will you have a cup of tea?” Even in the remotest parts of the West, Irish mammies will have a pot of tea ready on the remote possibility that a stranger might call.

So it was with great delight that I found “Irish Breakfast tea” in the local supermarket. It’s not quite Lyons (you don’t stand to win a car every month for example) and it is horrendously expensive, but it leaves a comforting stain on your teeth and is dark enough that you can’t see the bottom of the cup.

Likewise with Football. If you’re willing to swallow your pride and to suckle from the teat that is Rupert Murdoch, then you can get English football to your hearts content in Australia. Which is just as well when Arsenal seem set to dominate for the next decade. ESPN even have Tommy Smyth doing commentary. Tommy grew up 5km from where I did in the rolling drumlins of North Louth. He moved to the USA in the 50s but hasn’t lost his distinctive Dundalk accent, which now brings pleasure to millions of ESPN viewers around the world.

I went to my first Australian wedding last Saturday looking for differences to the Irish experience. But the similarities are what stand out. A nervous man marries a nervous woman. There are guests looking uncomfortable in suits and big hats and there are hyperactive kids running around on sugar-fuelled acts of destruction. You’ll have at least one argument between a couple who have had true love exposed to them on stage and therefore feel a piercing light shone into their relationship. There is nothing like vows of adoration between the newly married couple to make other couples feel inadequate in their own relationship. There is food and wine in abundance and speeches that vary from the bizarre to the sublime. At Saturday’s wedding, my sister took on the role of Chief Bridesmaid. It was her 5th such outing which makes her seem like a character in a Jane Austen Novel. She delivered a marvellous speech, which was well received; although I’m not sure the groom appreciated the threats to break his legs if he ever disappointed the bride.

After the official reception, we retreated to a rented house in the middle of the Blue Mountains (which aren’t very Blue, but I won’t go there). We partied until dawn crept like an angry bouncer across the porch and shuffled us off to bed. Earlier, the three Irish people at the wedding fulfilled the prophecy of James 19:88 “Wherever two or more Irish people meet in my name and alcohol is involved, they will sing the Fields of Athenry”. And low it came to pass. We gave the Fields socks in the most reggae version ever heard.

Then I did the same thing I’ve done at parties since I was 17. I found a nice girl and sat in the kitchen talking about life, politics, history and why there are always sea-gulls at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Kitchens have always been my favorite place at parties, you have easy access to the fridge and it creates the kind of cosy domesticity that makes conversation natural. We talked until 5am and then she went back to the living room where her boyfriend was asleep on the couch. That’s the problem with beautiful interesting women. They are rarely single. You can look for differences in the world, but more often that not, what disappoints is that most things are just the same.