Christmas Letter to my Mother

Dear Mam,

Sorry I didn't make it home for Christmas. I miss those mince pies you always offered when I arrived home on Christmas Eve (bought in Tesco's but warmed in the microwave to give it that home cooked feel). I miss the presents with the price tag still on and Dad's impatience for Christmas dinner,which meant sucking on half-cooked Brussels sprouts at 8am.

But since your head was burgled by the memory thief, Christmas at home hasn't been the same. We need you there to bring a reality check to the present opening ceremony by telling your grandchild that “she's a spoilt wee bitch” or enjoying a vodka and orange at 11am while regaling the first time visiting in-laws with tales of how many stitches each of your children gave you on the way out.

I'm spending this Christmas in New Zealand Mam, a country you once said was full of English people running from their lives. Maybe that's what I'm doing too Mam, but something keeps calling me back and I'm trying to understand why.

My first connection was in 1989. I was recently qualified and running from the Siberian recession that was 1980's Ireland. When I rocked up in London, I found that kiwi's were escaping from the same economic despair in their country. We met as mirrored peoples. Our lands were the furthest point in the world from each other and we are both dominated by a bigger neighbour who patronises us while offering employment opportunities and women to play with.

I worked with an Aucklander called Ian and over mid-week beers he'd charm me with stories from the land of the long white cloud. Tales of mountain peaks and crashing surf, of volcanoes shaking the earth while people skied, surfed and threw themselves off bridges while generally pushing the envelope of life. I was smitten, even when a South Islander later told me that like most Aucklanders, Ian had never been South of the Bombay Hills that perch majestically on the Auckland skyline. And so Ian had never visited 90% of his own country. But nevertheless the folk memory was ingrained.

Six years later in 1995, I finally worked up the courage to make the long trip South and I found that if anything Ian had underestimated things. In the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, the narrator meets the guy who designs planets. He pulls out the sketches for Earth and says that he is particularly proud of Norway. “I spent hours on those fjords” he said, “But the best part was I was able to copy them when I came to designing the South Island in New Zealand”.

But I suspect that God made New Zealand as an original and then threw away the mould. It is so spectacularly beautiful that it becomes almost overwhelming. And the best part is that through a serendipitous combination of distance and inadequate economic opportunity there are not too many people. And yet there are just enough to brew fantastic beer, cook delicious food and drive buses to get you from one jaw-dropping piece of scenery to the next.

I've been back here so many times since that the immigration people have me registered on their computer as a groupie. I'm in the North Island this time in a picture post card sea-side town called Pauanui. You wouldn't like it Mam. There are no pubs and nobody smokes. But you would love the beach. You were always a sun worshippers Mother, which makes it unfortunate that you spent all your life in Ireland. I could picture you lying on the beach here, finishing off a couple of Mills and Boons novels each day while sending Dad up to get you a fresh drink every ten minutes.

But it wasn't to be Mam, You have only the company of the black slanted Cooley Mountains this Christmas and whatever memories the Scrooge of Alzheimer's has indulged you with. I hope at least they fed you well in that home for the bewildered. You'll be pleased to know that I ate well as an Irish Mammy, you are the only person in the world that thinks I'm underweight and need a good feed.

I even helped out with the cooking on Christmas Day Mam, news that will no doubt shock you into disbelief, if your mind was not already programmed now to disbelieve everything. Christmas dinner is very different here because of the climate. Unfortunately the only element they keep from your traditional feast is the piece I never liked. In our house everyone was allowed to turn their nose up at element of the Christmas dinner. My brother couldn't stand Brussels Sprouts, my sister didn't like Turkey and I was adverse to the ham.

Pig was the centre-piece of this New Zealand Christmas but luckily there were many other alternatives to sooth the taste buds of the fussy eater. Being able to eat indoors or outdoors provides for greater scope in menu planning. We had the ham and boiled potatoes but also barbecue cooked prawns and copious salads of intricate design. Most New Zealanders are serious foodies it seems and take the responsibility of living in a land of natural plenty with earnest enthusiasm. Cook books are a favoured Christmas present here in the same way as bottles of Whiskey are in Ireland. Even old farmers with hands like shovels and weather beaten faces, can be found buried in Jamie Oliver's latest publication on Christmas morning.

It's a long way from the boil everything style of cooking that we used to enjoy Mam. But I'm adapting like you always taught me to do.

By the time Christmas evening came around, the Irish and the Kiwis finally found something in common. We had tested and tasted too much and the top buttons of everyone's trousers suddenly became undone. We slumped into the comfort of deep armchairs and surrendered ourselves to sleep.

I hope you might be doing the same Mam. Happy Christmas and difficult as it may be, I hope you're thinking of me as much as I am thinking of you.

Waking up is hard to do

It’s a sleepy early morning in Melbourne as I stumble out of bed and try to summon the energy to face the day. Summer has stuttered a few times this year but seems to be stubbornly resisting the call to clear its throat and roar. But cool mornings are no bad thing when you struggle to wake up as I do.

Morning radio here comes in two formats. All the commercial channels go down the same route with three presenters, two male and one female. One of the male presenters has to be as camp as a scout’s jamboree while the lady has to be blokish and go along with all the mindless gags the guys play. Alternatively, you can listen to the state radio which has a serious news hour in the morning. Unfortunately, Australia is an insular country and news here consists of drought, severe weather and corrupt local politicians that I’ve never heard of.

So I tend to bypass this medium and head straight for the TV. As I munch my cornflakes and try to crank my brain into second gear, I tend to channel surf. BBC world news is the opposite of insular. It tells me about cholera in Zimbabwe and election fraud in Venezuela. However, I find that at this hour of the morning, I’m not a good global citizen so I drift over to the Sports channels to catch up on European football and the masochistic pleasure of being an Arsenal supporter.

That wasn’t much fun this morning, so I flicked on the weather channel and hoped the boundless enthusiasm of the presenters would stir me out of my stupor. Australia is a big country but its weather doesn’t change that regularly. Nevertheless, these cheerful meteorologists will tell you the current temperature in Wagga Wagga every 15 minutes as though it were the most breath taking event since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile a rolling bar at the bottom of the screen brings dramatic breaking news, such as hailstones falling in Darwin. It’s the perfect breakfast TV for when your body is munching cornflakes in the living room while your brain is still happily tucked up in bed.

At 8.15am I gather all the possessions a modern man needs and load them into my “man bag”. Woman discovered the advantages of an over the shoulder number centuries ago. But it took the invention of the laptop computer before men saw the light. Now we have our own range of trendy satchels in which to carry the necessities of daily life. God be with the days when I’d head for work with just a wallet and a set of keys. Now I pack Blackberry, mobile phone, Ipod, book, keys, wallet and a raincoat for when the drought finally finishes. I also have my company ID card and all the post I pick up as I leave my apartment.

The tram stop is 50 meters away on Acland Street. It’s the first stop so there is usually a tram waiting there and it teases me as I approach. Will it wait until I get there or will he spy me in his mirrors and slam the doors shut just as I’m about to board? This latter procedure happens with suspicious regularity.

This morning he waits however and I drag my weary body on board and search out the best seat. There is a pecking order on trams. Don’t sit in the seats nearest the doors because old or pregnant ladies will get on and test your social responsibilities. Don’t sit near the bendy bit because somebody will get on and force you to move in, thus wedging your knees into a space built for midgets. And most importantly don’t sit facing backwards. I’m not sure why but this seems the most important factor for passengers. Maybe it’s an inner ear thing.

I nabbed a good seat near the front and settled in for the ride. Tram drivers are an eclectic lot. Most of them sit sullenly in their cabin, aloof from the commuting chaos going on behind their shoulders. They take no part in the ticketing function and hate to see themselves as tour guides. I’ve seen many tourists laden down with backpacks asking questions of the driver in their best broken English, only to be met with stoic indifference. This morning’s driver was different though. He announced each stop in a thick accent that suggested he had learned English from a talking clock. I watched him through the glass as he leaned ceremoniously towards the microphone at each stop. Speaking seemed to give him no pleasure at all, yet he soldiered on, adding some local information as he went. “Next stop Crown Casino and Melbourne Exhibition Centre……and the Polly Woodside restored sailing ship and maritime museum”.

No other tram driver on my route to work does this and it seemed that we were party to a practical joke that the guys at the depot play on all new drivers. No doubt he will soon be as sullen as the rest of them and spend his day scaring cyclists and closing the doors just before passengers get on.

We crossed over the Yarra River and the crush on the tram lightened. The girl beside me nudged me to let her out. No words were spoken, because public transport is a strangely silent place. Even couples traveling together will whisper conspiratorially and talk behind their hands. The only exceptions are those inconsiderate noise polluters who insist on shouting into mobile phones while sleepy heads like me are trying to steal an extra 20 minutes shut-eye.

I moved to let her out and noticed that a thin layer of drool had fallen from my mouth and had made landfall on the collar of my shirt. As I wiped it away, I noticed the two girls opposite were doing their best to pretend they hadn’t noticed. As I closed my gaping mouth I thought that I must start going to bed early. Sleep is a delicious pleasure but it really should be done in bed.

The Jimmy Bell Fan Club

“Have you got $20?” he said. “I’m trying to get a room.” I was momentarily taken back. He didn’t look the begging type and his request was so ridiculously over the top for that industry that I assumed he was a recently retrenched banker. “Jeez mate” I replied. “Don’t you know that there is a recession on?”

Begging and homelessness is on the up it seems, just as the economy is heading in the other direction. But even before the downturn, Australia had a massive problem. Drugs and alcohol are too easily available here as is an outdoor culture that goes back to the original squatters and the jolly swagman of Waltzing Matilda fame. There are an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Australia and while most survive on State handouts and the angelic hand of Mission work, there are some who resort to old fashioned requests to the public for cash. Being an inventive country however, Australian swagmen are clever and cunning in this department.

In my first month here I was staying in a hotel in the City Centre that was uncomfortably close to the Central train station. I don’t know what it is about these places, but if you pitch up in any strange City in the world and you find yourself in dire need of drugs or pornography, then all you have to do is head down to the Central station. The dodgy stuff will normally be out the back nestled between kebab shops and laundrettes that double as internet cafes. Within the space of four days I was stopped by three different people with exactly the same story. All of them were well dressed and spoke with educated Australian accents. Their story involved a trip to the big city and a car that ran out of petrol. They had spent their last few shillings on a hypoallergenic blanket for their lonely grandmother’s arthritic cat and so were in desperate need for $20 to buy petrol and to get home to the 25 orphans waiting in the care centre they ran. What blew their story (apart from its repetition) was that each claimed that they had called into the local Police Station and the good constables of Victoria suggested that they stop random strangers in the street like me and hustle them for money.

I’ve been scandalously neglectful of the plight of those who are habitably challenged. But my conscience has been pricked this week by the presence of the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne. Federation Square is a civic space in the centre of the City that the council built to rival the Sydney Opera House. They failed miserably in that respect but it’s still a nice place to meet people and as this week proved, just the right size for a little four a side football pitch.

Fifty six teams took part and as Melbourne is an immigrant City, most of them had some local support. The Poles were probably the best, bringing colour and noise to the arena as well as some alcohol. This was unfortunate as most of the players have taken up football to try and stay off the booze. The Afghans were also well represented despite John Howard’s best efforts to keep them out over the last twelve years.

Interest in the competition was low early in the week. This is a town that treats football with a little suspicion and its homeless population with even more. I turned up each day to follow the progress of the Irish team and in the early days of the week I reckon that if I’d brought my trainers I would have gotten a game. As the week went on, the crowds grew and so did the standard of the football. Ireland won their group and qualified for the top group in the second round. I watched a lot of games and one thing that stood out is that national teams play the same style no matter what the level is. The Poles were big and physical. The Germans strolled around with arrogance and an assumption of superiority even when four goals down. The Portuguese were full of useless step overs and the English of course went out on penalties.

As for the Irish, well they leaned towards the Jack Charlton’s years in the early rounds by hoofing the ball up to the forwards with indecent haste. As the week went on their play improved, helped by the excellent skills of Captain James Bell. Jimmy became a bit of a local hero during the week, developing a fan club that seemed to include people of all nationalities with the possible exception of the Irish.

But even Jimmy’s skills weren’t enough to get past perfidious Albion (or the feckin Brits as they are known where I come from) and the Irish unfortunately fell at the last 16 stage. Thankfully the organisers kept everyone involved until the end and we got to play for the Dignitary Cup and after a triumphant march past minnows like Holland and Germany, Jimmy and his mates lined up on Sunday in the final against Nigeria. This was the preview match before the overall final and Federation Square was packed to the rafters of its gaudy facades. I seemed to be the only Irish person watching the team during the week but by the final on Sunday every backpacker in Melbourne had made their way there. I felt a little bitter at these bang wagon jumpers as it reminded me of my youth when I used to put in the effort to go to all the friendlies and then couldn’t get a ticket for the big match because some Johnny come lately did.

But when Jimmy stuck away the winner to seal the win and ensure that Ireland got a shiny cup and 9th place in the competition, all that was forgotten. The smiles on the face of the team were enough to make anyone proud. We find our hero’s in the strangest places.

The Great Bank Job

Monty Python were the masters of surreal comedy. Yet, in the crazy world we now live, they could easily be judged as acute social commentators. The dead parrot sketch comes to mind as it represents the best metaphor we have for the current financial crisis. We got to where we are now because banks were able to sell dead parrots and unlike the Monty Python customer, we were too stupid to see this.

Its fun working for a large American bank at the moment, as you can imagine. Two weeks ago the Christmas Party was cancelled, causing anxiety among those who had spent the last twelve months cultivating a relationship with the cute girl from accounts. Unfortunately back office bankers are merely meek people in suits. If we had any bravado at all, we’d be using our mathematical knowledge in the front office, designing obscure credit default swaps. But instead, we spend twelve months staring at our shoes, kept alive only by the hope that alcohol at the Christmas Party will oil the cogs of our rusty ardour.

Now that all seems faintly irrelevant as having a job by Christmas is more pressing.

The bosses are doing their best to rally the troops. “Too big to fail” is the latest mantra, which unfortunately reminds me of White Star Line’s advertising campaign before the launch of the Titanic. Being a Manager in the Australian branch of a US bank this week feels a little like being the conductor of the Titanic’s Dance Band. Except they had a slim chance of making it to the lifeboats. We’ll be lucky if we can grab some flotsam as we jump over the side.

But in these challenging times, it always helps to find somebody in a worse situation than you. Luckily, a pigeon came along last week and offered to be our fall guy. We work on the fifth floor with a large ledge outside our window. No doubt our banking forefathers used such ledges in the last great banking crisis to relieve themselves of their worries. The windows are now hermetically sealed to stop us from doing likewise.

On Monday we came to work and found that a pigeon had reversed the banking suicide routine. He had flown up from the ground and killed himself on the ledge, having no doubt become depressed after losing his portfolio in the great bird stock market crash, when he went long on grain futures. His body lay there on the other side of the glass and it dawned on us that we would have to sit here and watch him rot each day as we also watched our company decay.

At first we wondered if the pigeon was dead at all or merely critically ill. Strangely enough, that’s also how we felt about the company last Monday. By Tuesday it was clear that both were beyond repair and as the week went on the poor old bird disintegrated into a pathetic skeleton and some ragbag feathers. And the pigeon didn’t do too well either.

I guess we’re too high up for the rats to feast on his corpse, so it was left to decompose in the sun. Unfortunately, Melbourne is experiencing a cold snap at the moment with temperatures dropping to the levels of an Irish summer’s day. So the bird’s decay has been slow and torturous, with bone and feathers stubbornly defying the call of nature. We come in each morning hoping for final resolution but find the process lingering. A bit like our jobs you might say if you weren’t getting as tired of the similes as I am.

The ironic thing is that a job in the bank used to be the safest position available. In the Siberian winter that was 1980’s Ireland, the banks and the Civil Service were the only people recruiting school leavers. I applied for both and got as far as sitting the exam for the Civil Service. I still have the letter at home telling me that I came 52nd in the country (out of 4,500 who sat the exam) and that I would be called for interview in due course. I was tremendously excited and placed the letter in my special folder, alongside my bronze under 10 sprint medal and the first Valentine’s card I received (which I subsequently found out came from my Mother and I’m paying a fortune in therapy fees as a result. Thanks Mam!).

I can only assume that the interviews of the people who finished 1st to 51st are dragging on, because 25 years later, I’m still waiting to be called.

The banks didn’t even reply to my applications when I left school, but through various maneuvers and takeovers, I have found myself working for them for the last twelve years. And the past few weeks have proved beyond doubt that this is no longer a safe job. Banks are at the mercy of the market to a greater extent than other companies (for reasons I won’t begin to bore you with it) and work recentlyhas been an exercise of watching the share price collapse with one eye while watching emails arrive from senior management with the other eye. These messages are designed to reassure us as to the company’s strength, as though none of us were capable of reading newspapers or watching TV.

These are “unprecedented” times apparently, although it looks pretty similar to 1929 to me (not that I was around then I hasten to add). I think if you look down through history you’ll see lots of examples of the greed of the few being paid for by the many. As the good book says “there is nothing new under the sun”. Although I’m not sure Ecclesiastes foresaw a meltdown in the Credit Default Options market.

Yesterday, the dead pigeon was finally cleaned up and taken away. The bank is still here but the confidence of having a safe job has been swept away too.

God makes his own importance

God and myself fell out many years ago when I started dating the devil and he still refused to talk to me when the devil does to you what the devil does. But the family are over visiting me at the moment and as every Irish emigrant over the years has done, I have to pretend to the Daddy that I'm still a regular Mass-goer and that I flagellate myself nightly as he taught me to do as a child.

It may come as a surprise to people who know me for my hedonistic lifestyle, but there was a time when I wanted to a Priest. That was before I developed a liking for the pleasures of the flesh. I gave up my vocational intentions before I realised that being a Priest didn't preclude those pleasures and if anything would have improved my chances of obtaining them. I kept up the Mass going however through my teenage years because it offered the best way of seeing girls on their knees and was a chance to catch up with my mates on a Sunday morning to discuss the previous night's disco exertions.

Then I went to London and found that Mass consisted of old people and bitter old Irish Priests who never forgave the world for the fact that they got posted to Tooting. I stopped going completely when ITV started showing live football on Sundays. My family visiting me at the moment changes all that, as it means sleeping on the sofa for two weeks and being awakened by the first person up. This is usually my over religious Dad asking where the nearest church is.

On the first Sunday we were in Sydney and my sister brought us to the posh Mary Immaculate church. God seemed to have redecorated since I last visited and was now keen to impress the neighbours. LCD screens were prominent throughout the church and they delivered a crisp power-point presentation which kept the process running like clockwork and made the Mass seem like a merchant bank board meeting. The church was run by the Jesuits and as those pompous Soldiers of Christ are prone to do, the celebrant spent his sermon spouting Pop Psychology and musing on whether Hell existed or not. All I can say is that for the hour I spent there, Hell certainly existed.

As with many things, Melbourne offers a different perspective to the brash new money world of Sydney. My nearest Church is the Sacred Heart on Grey Street, a thoroughfare more famous for prostitution, drugs and homeless people. The Sacred Heart mission is there to minister to the less fortunate among us and most of them return the favour by turning up for 11am Mass. So it was an eclectic audience to which I introduced my family this past Sunday. We took our perch behind the bewildered and the merely confused and awaited the entrance of Father Petrulis. He entered in the manner of Barack Obama, pressing the flesh and beaming a beatific smile at the congregation. Instead of mounting the alter, he stood in the middle of the assembly and talked as though he was at a barbeque on St Kilda beach.

Straight away I knew this was more my scene. The choir consisted of six melody challenged old ladies who made up for a deficit in talent with gusto and enthusiasm, a reader who sounded like she was reciting the First Letter of St Paul to the Romans in the language in which it was originally written and a congregation who treated the sitting down, standing up part of the Mass like a Mexican wave.

The highlight however, was the part played by Matilda and Chiara in the process. They were making their First Communion and as there were only two of them, Father Petrulis basically allowed them to run the show including inviting them on to the alter to mimic everything he did which made the consecration of the Eucharist look like a disco dancing routine.

That was trumped however by the prayers of the faithful which consisted of a few eclectic prepared pieces on subjects ranging from congratulating the new American President to prayers for the welfare of all those who had drank and gambled too much during the Melbourne Spring racing festival.

Then it was thrown open to the floor when the congregation was invited to present their own prayers. We had an old lady who was concerned about unloved young people, prayers for unborn babies and sick mothers and somebody who I think was looking for lost keys. I was tempted to stand up and thank God for Arsenal’s great win the night before against Man United, but my nerve deserted me.

For his sermon, the Priest chose to speak about Richard Minouge who had passed away the week before. Richard was one of the many homeless people who migrate to St Kilda for the beach life and the tolerant attitude of the locals. The picture Father Petrulis painted of him was of real human being, with failings and virtues but with enough humanity to fill a church at his funeral. His point was that God’s spirit lives in all of us, if you look closely enough. It was as uplifting and inspiring as Barack Obama’s acceptance speech and for the second time in a week I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

This was preaching as it is supposed to be. Talking about real people and real heartfelt spirituality. I wondered how many other Priests would minister to the homeless and see God’s light within them. As I walked home I felt uplifted after Mass for the first time since those pre-puberty years and I thought of those lines from Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Goal”.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.

Working for the Yankee Dollar - Part 3

Frank finally got a pay increase after the company ran out of excuses for not giving one. They had used the Argentinean collapse, Russian debt crisis, September 11th, Enron, Worldcom and the spectacular bursting of the dot com bubble as a reason for not paying their staff the market rates already. All these events coincidently happened towards the end of the year when salary increases were being decided.

But this particular year the world was quiet. While the mandarins in New York were scrambling around for excuses to cut costs, they were hampered by the CEO telling all who would listen that times had never been better and that the company was awash with cash. Unfortunately for the mandarins, the CEO’s complex bonus arrangement was dependent on a high share price. He pulled $100m the previous year but the board had rather cruelly decided that most of it would be in share options. These were only going to be worth anything if the share price went up and the best way to achieve this was to report massive and entirely fictitious profits. They crept up each quarter so that by year end the company was report ably making more money than the GDP of Belgium. It didn’t con the markets of course who saw right through the numbers game the CEO was playing but it made it harder for the company to pretend to its own staff that times were tough.

Not that this was beyond the hypocrisy of head office who started spinning a yarn about how building costs for the new corporate centre in Dublin were way beyond budget and how this would have an impact on local pay rises. This was ironic considering the company normally said that global results were what mattered. Frank hadn’t been around for long but he was quickly learning not to believe a word the company told him.

He used the extra money in his monthly pay to move out of the student flat in Ranelagh he’d been sharing with three mates from college and found a new place along the river. The housing boom was just kicking off and tax breaks encouraged builders to erect glass cages along the quay in the part of town that people had only ventured to before to buy drugs or to negotiate the re-purchase of their car radio. Frank sub-let the spare room to a young Spanish girl who was part of the initial wave of immigration into Ireland’s fledging economy and she fed him paella while he fed her increasingly lustful stares.

From his living room he watched the new corporate headquarters taking shape across the river, like a glass and steel monument to the new Ireland. He wondered where his desk would be and if it would be river facing. That way he could watch Monica as she wandered around their apartment even when he was at work.

Given his proximity to the new building, Eimear had asked him to represent the team on an early inspection and to report back. It was an afternoon off work, so he jumped at the chance and he joined four others in the first trip across the river and into the heart of the International Financial Services Centre. They were met at the half finished reception area by a girl who introduced herself as an ergonomic engineer, which to Frank sounded like an Engineering job for people who didn’t like Engineering. She showed them round a prototype of what the internal space would eventually look like. To Frank and the others it looked space age, compared to the 1960’s slum that they were currently crammed into. Desks that curved around your body, soft lighting and flat computer screens. Best of all, it had air-conditioning, a concept that was just arriving in Ireland along with hot stone massages and foccacia bread.

Frank reported back enthusiastically and the other staff members hung on his every word as though he was a Columbus who had witnessed the new world. When the move finally happened, he was the unofficial leader, showing people how the chilled water dispenser in the kitchen worked and where the best place was to sit if you wanted to see the skimpedly dressed girls from cash processing descend the stairs.

When they had all moved in, the big boss came over from New York to inspect the newest addition to his empire. He did a tour of each floor like some General inspecting soldiers at the front. Then he called all the staff into the atrium and gave what he thought was a motivating speech. He talked about how Dublin had 50% turnover the previous year and how he was determined to stem this. He said loyalty was the most important thing in business and that together we could make the company great. Frank sniggered and Eimear had to nudge him. She knew the guy from New York was talking bullshit, that he would happily sack them all tomorrow if the need arose. But she also knew that this was a game and you had to nod your head and play along. Pretty soon he’d be in First Class on his way back to New York and they could get back to normal.

The following Monday, everyone turned up at work to find that their new flat screens had disappeared to be replaced by old fashioned deep backed monitors. Suddenly the ergonomically designed desks weren’t so comfortable as the curvature brought your body within 10 centimetres’ of the computer screen. The systems manager was embarrassed. He’d spent all weekend unplugging the new screens and replacing them with these technological dinosaurs. The boss had sent an email from the Delta business lounge in Dublin airport. His traders in New York didn’t have flat screens, so he was damned if a bunch of Micks in the back office of back offices would have them. He wouldn’t listen to arguments that the screens were on a three year lease and it would cost more money to send them back than would be saved by replacing them. Money wasn’t the point; it was all about letting off-shore centres know where they stood in the greater lexicon of the corporate world.

Two weeks later another email arrived. The big boss had left to take up a position with the company’s biggest competitor. Frank read the news on his new but second hand monstrosity of a monitor. He looked up the dictionary and saw that loyalty was “faithful adherence to a leader.” It didn’t say anything about the leader’s loyalty to his staff. It was a lesson that would stay with Frank for as long as the clapped out monitors.

The Cure at Troy

Brian taught English at Xavier College for nearly forty years. He retired three years ago but kept in touch with his old buddies through a friendly little group that meets every Friday morning. They have a cup of coffee in Brunetti’s in Carlton and talk about the good old days when boys could be smacked if they couldn’t name the twelve apostles or recite the life history of Ignatius Loyola. Once the coffee and the nostalgia are out of the way, Brian and his fellow retirees head down to East Melbourne for their weekly meeting with John the security guard.

John didn’t go to a posh school like Xavier College. He’s a bit vague on schooling to be honest. His years in the Army beat out any memories of childhood, happy or otherwise and his lived in face and bulbous fists suggests that his education didn’t come from musty old priests and men in tweed jackets. He shuffled from foot to foot as if ready to start a race and stared with weary resignation as Brian and his friends unpacked their placards and assembled a small table on the footpath before him.

Brian has been coming here every Friday morning for the past two years but has never spoken to John. They dance around each other but are destined never to embrace.

The retirees like to be set up by 8am when the first appointments are held in the East Melbourne Day procedure centre. Brian likes to think that they hold a dignified protest and they make a point of not speaking to or physically impeding the frightened and lonely women who are there to avail of the centre’s pregnancy termination services. John is there just in case their dignity deserts them.

I passed at 8am on my way to work and as anyone who knows me will testify, my brain is not exactly in gear at that ungodly hour. I saw a group of old men engaged in a silent protest outside a medical centre and assumed that Australia had followed Ireland’s example and removed free healthcare for pensioners. Or perhaps they were complaining about the delay in receiving a hip replacement. It was only when I got closer that I saw that their protest was more sinister and realised that being undignified can come in other ways than through the spoken word. Brian held a poster that showed a picture of a before and after termination. Subtlety obviously wasn’t the corner stone of their campaign.

I stopped and asked if they were Catholic. “We’re not a Catholic organisation” Brian said. “But most of us are Catholics.” He picked up on my accent and asked if I was also a member of the one true faith.

I said only part of me was these days, but it was my conscience and it told me that these guys should be ashamed of themselves. Brian didn’t even flinch. Countering that argument was taught in Pro-Life class 101. “There is no shame in helping those who can’t help themselves”.

“What would Jesus do?” I said. “What did he do when he found Mary Magdalene being stoned? She had been engaged in the sort of sexual immoralities that you guys get excited about. Did he knock up a couple of posters of her before and after she’d been stoned? Did he tell her about the various departments of hell to which she was condemned? No, he didn’t. He put his arm round her and told her that he loved her. But what did he do when he found the money lenders in the temple? He smashed up their tables and threw them out. Because Jesus realised that Greed is man’s worse sin. So you know what you and your pensioner mates should be doing Brian? You should be outside the Banks down in the CBD protesting about their immorality and leave these poor girls to their own conscience.”

I heard a chuckle from behind and saw that John was taking great merriment from my comments. “These guys act all holier than thou. But there’s an old fellow sleeps in that alleyway every night and none of them would even bring him a cup of tea. They don’t care about real people, only ones who haven’t been born yet.”

Brian ignored him as he had clearly done every Friday for the past two years. I was a reluctant but potential recruit however. “Do you know The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney?” he asked.

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

the outcry and the birth-cry

of new life at its term.

“You’re not trying to convince me with poetry” I asked. “Sure even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose.” Brian smiled. His eyes lit up when I mentioned the devil, as though we were back in his territory. “I taught Heaney for the last twenty years in Xavier. Don’t you think those words are pertinent.”

“I prefer the start of that poem” I said. “Human Beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard… and hope and history rhyme”. Isn’t there lots of pain and suffering in the world that you could devote your energies towards? Why not protest about the real live babies being bombed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or the malnourished children being brought up in poverty in some of Melbourne’s suburbs?”

“These guys haven’t got long left” John said. “They have to ration out their protest. Give it a couple of years and they’ll all be dead and then they can ask God personally if they were right to make my Friday mornings miserable these pass two years.”

Thirty minutes later I was sitting at my money lenders desk in the temple of Capitalism. Doom and gloom filled our computer screens and it seemed as though the second coming was at hand. Jesus, in the form of the global credit crisis was about to smash our tables and chuck our immoral asses into the street.

The Road Home

I was going to write about the global financial crisis this week, but then I realised that I’m an accountant who has worked in the Financial Services industry for twenty years and I haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on, so how I am expected to explain it to others. Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m getting a bit bored with the whole thing. When you wake up to the news of another disastrous day on Wall Street for the umpteenth morning in a row, it kind of loses its dramatic impact. Cancer is a disaster, getting a letter from your first girlfriend saying her mother won’t let her see you anymore because of her upcoming exams is a disaster, Man United winning the treble in 1999 was a disaster. But rich people’s investments being worth less than they were yesterday, well that’s not even unfortunate.

Despite my profession, I’ve always had a carefree relationship with money. The truth is, I’ve never had it for long enough to develop an attachment. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the finer things in life that only money can buy, I’ve just always felt that I should own money and not the other way round. When asked why I stuck with a highly stressful job, I used to say that I had an expensive burger and chip habit to support. And this wasn’t too far from the truth. I ate my way through the Celtic Tiger, fur and all. As a result I stacked on about 15 kilos during my years in Dublin, as my body became a symbol for the bloated excess of modern Ireland. Unlike the Irish economy mine wasn’t looking like it would implode any time soon, so I’ve taken things into my own hands.

I’ve started walking home a couple of times a week, which is helping with the weight loss but also gives me a chance to throw the old Ipod on shuffle and to enjoy the spring evenings through the riverbanks and parks of this beautiful city. I start in Collins St in the central business district or CBD as it’s known. All Australian cities have to have a CBD, even if they have little or no business to transact. It’s downhill from there to the Yarra River which meanders like a brown snake towards the salt water of Port Phillip Bay. Tonight the rowers are out in force, pumping their narrow boats through the still waters in a blur of rippling muscles. I head over the bridge and onto St. Kilda road with its tree lined thoroughfare leading south towards the shore and my house. From here its about 10km home, but I’m emboldened by the memory of being 8 years old when the De La Salle brothers used to make us do 10 mile sponsored walks to raise money for the brothers alcohol and pornography fund. So if I could do that as an 8 year old in the sort of hob nailed boots that my mother used to make me wear, then this little jaunt should be no trouble at all. Of course, as an 8 year old, I wasn’t carrying a wallet, blackberry, mobile phone, Ipod and 15 kilos of excess weight.

The Arts centre comes up on my right with its sophisticated advertisements for upcoming ballets and symphonies. Sydney may have the Opera House, but Melbourne has the culture. When they built the centre, they must have stepped back and thought that it looked like a 1970s communist party headquarters because only that could explain the obvious afterthought that they stuck on top. I think they were going for an Eiffel Tower look, but they’ve ended up with something that I could only describe as a mobile phone mast, if that didn’t do a disservice to the architectural splendour of phone masts.

Down the road I come to the domain and the sweeping parklands that blanket the southern part of town. Directly ahead is the striking war memorial that stands sentry over the City and the rattle of trams passing domain interchange on their way to exotic locations like Toorak and Kooyong. The traffic gets quieter as the road widens and trees become bushier and more frequent and suddenly I can hear the music coming through my headphones. Every now and again the shuffle will throw up a classic from my innocent youth that I haven’t listened to in years and I find myself singing along to Cat Stephens or Gordon Lightfoot. Luckily all the other walkers are wired into their own personal entertainment and are oblivious to my tuneless warbling.

The impressive grounds of Wesley College come up on the left and I think of all my old friends in Wesley Hall in Dublin. I’m sure they will be glad to hear that the Methodists in Melbourne are keeping up the traditions of their Irish cousins. They also charge extortionist fees to educate the sons of the wealthy and privileged and to maintain the social order.

I turn right and head down towards Albert Park. Meatloaf has just started singing to me about how two out of three ain’t bad. My singing amuses a homeless person sitting outside a shelter and momentary embarrassment leads to a shared chuckle. I skirt the lake with its serious runners in lycra and wrap around shades and head for the open fields of the park. Chinese immigrants in counterfeit Arsenal football tops are playing 5 a side with jumpers for goal posts and large ladies in baggy tracksuits are being put through their paces by a sadist with a whistle. In between there are groups of twos and threes engaged in that great and pointless pastime of kicking an Aussie Rules football to each other.

The sight of all that physical exercise makes me tired but I know I’m nearly home. I brave it through Fitzroy St with its tempting take away smells and turn on to the esplanade above St Kilda beach. The sun is melting across the bay in reds and oranges and this spurs me on for the last kilometre. I make it home and head into I Carusi for a celebration Quattro Formaggi pizza. “You’re quiet tonight”, I said. She shrugged and said “global financial crisis, nobody wants to eat out until things settle down”. There’s no escaping it I guess but if you want a temporary respite then put your Ipod on and head out for a walk.

International Banking - My part in it's downfall

The Irish Banks went on strike for three months in 1976 and to be honest I’m not sure anybody noticed. In those days most people were paid in cash and if you were unlucky enough to get a cheque, there were plenty of pubs that would cash it for you and they would then use it to pay their suppliers in an unofficial system of credit. Most people were spared the luxury of savings and so didn’t have to worry about it being locked up in some untouchable vault. What little they had was kept in the post office or the credit union and that’s where you got a car loan or the money to go on holiday. Banks were simply magnificent Georgian buildings in the town square that changed your punts into sterling when you were visiting your sister in Birmingham each summer.

People owned their own house (and usually only one in the days before Irish people owned as many houses as John McCain) or lived in one kindly provided by the local council, so Mortgages were as rare as hen’s teeth. Pensions were paid by your employer or the State and were based on your final salary and not the whims of the stock market.

In short, people had little or no interaction with banks, apart from an obsession with getting their children a job in one. If banks had gone bust then, it would scarcely have bothered the masses as much as the risk of their local pub closing. These days of course it is different. Banks all over the world are tottering on the precipice with only the weak and unsteady hand of government holding them back. And everybody is affected by this whether they like it or not.

In the past thirty years, Governments have abdicated responsibility for running the economy to the International private banking system. On your first day at work HR will give you a form requesting lots of personal (and mainly intrusive but irrelevant) information. This will include your bank account number, so that they may efficiently transfer your hard earned cash into the clutches of a private company. You can try and argue that you want no hand or part in this capitalist conspiracy, but you won’t get very far and you certainly won’t get paid.

Once your money is in the bank, you’re on the slippery slope towards debt and destitution. They will drip feed it back to you in weekly withdrawals from the hole in the wall outside or make you queue for half an hour to get it from a surly clerk who will make you feel guilty for withdrawing your own cash. Over time the bank will encourage you to get a credit card and maybe a loan or two (particularly if they trapped you at a drink fuelled student promotion) and maybe tease you with some tax avoiding off-shore savings account.

Encouraging salaries to be paid directly into banks was the first example of outsourcing society’s needs to these private and profit making institutions. But much worse was to follow and for that we have to look to that arch enemy of Society, Margaret Thatcher. She engineered a seismic cultural change in Britain that most people understood as uncomfortable but went along with anyway. In Ireland, we swallowed our normal anti-English sentiment and embraced Thatcherism with enthusiasm. I was always a rebel against this orthodoxy I should say and I proved this when I refused to pay my poll tax while living in England in the late 1980’s. At the time, I lived across Dulwich Park from Thatcher and she never called in to say hello or to bring round a cake when the three of us Irish lads moved in next to her. We were in the flat one night when Thatcher popped up on the news. Emperor Hirohito had just died and the Iron Lady was making a pompous speech about how she would be shunning the funeral on account of the Japanese making the English build a railway in Burma during world war two when that was clearly a job for Irish navvies. My flatmate Jella chuckled and said “that’s OK; the bitch can pass on her condolences in person when she meets him in hell”. Oh how we laughed.

So you can tell that I don’t have a soft spot for her. But my feelings are complicated by the fact that I have become fat and comfortable from her decisions. I got a job in Financial Services in the UK at precisely the time that Thatcher was de-regulating that industry and handing over the keys to the nation’s housing stock and the administration of ordinary people’s pensions. In a few short years, council housing estates were sold off to banks who then mortgaged them back to the people who had lived in them for generations. Your pension was no longer a guaranteed reward after a life of hard work, but something you had to pay for yourself. It would then go into the coffers of a large financial institution to be gambled on stock markets and in complex financial instruments which were beyond the intellect of even those who administered them.

So unlike 1976, if banks fail now, they will bring your salary, your savings, your house and your pension down with them. We have sold our economic soul to these bastions of profit and risk and if they crash it would be as fundamental as the loss of water, electricity or breathable air. So while it is morally repugnant to have tax payers bail out these bastards, the alternative is such an appalling vista that it can scarcely be contemplated. Our governments took Thatcher’s lead and mortgaged our souls to the banks. The really scary thing is that they also sold water, electricity and the maintenance of clean air to private companies. They are also greedy and speculative and will eventually fail for the same reason the banks have failed. Guess who will have to bail them out?

Ah Sure that was a Grand Final

Memory is a funny thing. What we choose to remember probably says more about us than anything else. I’m useless with names for example which is unfortunate as I’m also useless at bluffing. So I’ve met people in the street that I’ve known for years and can’t for the life of me remember what they are called. But instead of coming up with a story about a bang on my head that has suddenly made me amnesic or how I’m really my twin brother and I believe the person in front of me is my sibling’s friend, I mumble a few words and stumble on.

For reasons I’ll come to, this week I tried to remember a school class from years ago. It was in 1980 I think and the school had reluctantly decided to teach us Civics. I say reluctantly because my school cared only for academic achievement and Civics wasn’t on the State exam system in those days. In hindsight it seems strange that a country so obsessed with its History and national pride should care so little about teaching its kids about modern Irish life. I guess like its people, it prefers to live in the past. In the 1980’s our past was a glamorous place of heroes and princes. Our present was a grey and rain-sodden tale of strikes and emigration boats.

I can remember everything about that first Civics class except the name of the teacher. Maybe I’m just fascinated about what she was talking about or maybe she was the first female I had a crush on. Only Freud will know. The subject that day was national cultural events. Like most teachers, instead of telling us things, she asked questions and tried to tease the answer out of us. This took hours and I often wondered why she didn’t just tell us the answers in the first place.

So for forty minutes we struggled to name Ireland’s annual cultural events. Christmas didn’t count apparently because it wasn’t uniquely Irish. After much huffing and puffing, Snotser McKeown mentioned St Patricks Day. It was the first thing Snotser had said all year, apart from asking for the loan of a tissue (a loan I might point out that nobody ever wanted to be repaid). Those of us in the smart row were upbraided by Snotser beating us to the teacher’s approval, so we argued fiercely that St Patrick’s Day wasn’t uniquely Irish either. Even in those days, it was clearly an event for yanks and other plastic paddies. But she wasn’t having any of it and wrote it on the board were it stood naked and alone for the rest of the class. As the bell was ringing for lunch, she lost her patience and screamed “what about the bloody All-Ireland Final”. We looked at each other with surprise and thought, “Isn’t that just a football match”?

I thought of that class this week because the AFL Grand Final was on in Melbourne and it made me compare it to Ireland’s premier sporting event. And I’m sad to say that in comparison to the Aussie Rule’s final, the All-Ireland final is just a football match. Over here, it’s a week long activity that starts with the semi-finals. That itself comes after two weeks of finals activity which works up the passion of supporters. On the Monday of Grand Final week you have the Brownlow medal ceremony, which is an opportunity for player’s wives and girlfriends to display cleavage and pearly white teeth while supporting a $3,000 dress with the aid of double-sided sticky tape. They also hand out a medal to the player voted best and fairest by the competition’s umpires. Which is a bit like asking the Police to name the country’s best burglar.

The rest of the week is dominated by a carnival at Federation Square, where you can test your marking skills by leaping onto the back of a mannequin dressed as a Collingwood player and propelling yourself towards a hanging ball. Most people just take the opportunity to kick the pretend Collingwood dummy, which is how it should be. All right thinking people hate Collingwood after all.

By Friday, excitement is building up in the City as the media goes into overdrive. The City itself hosts a parade on this day, featuring all the players from both finalists. This being Australia, they are transported along the parade route in the back of Utes. Special chairs are placed in the open back of each vehicle and the players sit in pairs and wave regally to the crowd, like some Indian Viceroy and his wife aboard a ceremonial elephant.

If you’re not part of the lucky 100,000 people to procure a ticket, then the Saturday of the match itself is traditionally spent at a barbeque. Thousands of these were held across Victoria last weekend as the first warm day of spring came to join the party. I ventured into the heart of the Eastern suburbs for mine, to a land of white picket fences, detached bungalows and mighty front and back gardens. This facilitates the barbeque itself but also the obligatory half time kick about. This is a blokes only affair and allows middle aged Australian men to relive some lost childhood. To my amazement, I found that I was able to skilfully kick their odd shaped football, although I think the 6 bottles of beer I’d consumed in the first half helped.

The game itself wasn’t a classic but at least the underdog (Hawthorne) won. Geelong have dominated footy for the last two years but on this occasion they froze like a rabbit in headlights.

On Monday morning, there were a lot of happy and hungover Hawthorne fans at work. And the rest of the staff were just happy that Melbourne finally had a winner in the game it invented after eight barren years. If cultural events are measured by the amount of interest that ordinary men, women and children display, then the Grand Final is up there with the best of them. I couldn’t find one person in Melbourne that had no interest in it. They don’t need Civics lessons here to tell them what to be proud of.

Working for the Yankee Dollar - Part 2

Behind Eimear’s desk was a large framed poster of the sort loved by international financial companies and small marketing firms. Three hands, one black, one white and one yellow, intertwined beneath a slogan that said “Together we are One”.

Someone in HR figured that a few motivational pictures were all the staff needed to get them to go that extra mile. Bugger pay increases, a feeling that you were all part of one big happy team was all that mattered. To Eimear it looked like the sort of picture you’d find in a Credit Union. Every time she saw it she was reminded of the time she told her mother she’d been promoted to Manager. Next time she was home she found out that her mother had told all the neighbours that Eimear was now a Bank Manager.

Eimear had been promoted to Manager as compensation for not getting a pay increase. She didn’t tell her mother that bit. It got her a better desk and an invitation to the weekly management meeting. This turned out to be more of a punishment than a reward however. Regular meetings are fine the first couple of times, but they soon turn into the office version of water boarding. A feeling of drowning in a sea of nothingness is common to both.

Each manager gets a few minutes to update the team on issues the boss is already aware of and nobody else cares about. As a general rule, if you have to wait a week to hear something at a meeting, it can’t have been that important in the first place. After each manager has used up their allotted time talking about transaction numbers and the planned team night out at the bowling alley, the boss gets his turn. Generally he’ll just regurgitate what he’s been told at the senior manager’s meeting but with a few alternations to soften the blow of negative news. So where he might have been told that sweeping redundancies are planned, he’ll tell his team that the company is looking at some strategic restructuring initiatives to maximise synergies.

At Eimear’s first meeting the boss didn’t feel like softening the blow. Desperate measures were called for. If the department didn’t trim its expenses by 10%, then New York would do it for them. Eimear was a dab hand at spreadsheets, so the boss had asked her to put together some numbers beforehand.

“Salaries make up 50% of our budget, rent and services 40% and stationary 10%.”

That last number fell off his lips with an excited murmur. It was clear to him what needed to be done. “Lets cut stationary”, he exclaimed. “Those bastards think they can get a new pen every time they open their desk and what is it with the amount of highlighters we go through? Are we running colouring competitions? And why are we buying calculators for people? Don’t they all have Excel on their computers?

The managers looked at each other and shrugged. Once the boss got a crazy idea in his head, he was like a dog with a bone and no amount of logic would change his mind. Eimear was innocent to the ways of the office however and she had the full analysis of costs in front of her.

“The vast majority of the stationary budget is paper. And we can’t stop that because we’re legally obliged to maintain hard copies of all data and print reports for clients. When you take out paper, we hardly spend anything on stationary.”

The boss smiled. Eimear and her colleagues were simple number crunchers. He had been invited into the secret group of senior strategy thinkers that were trained to think outside the box. The previous November the boss had spent a week at an off-site planning meeting in Barbados. The purpose of the meeting was to plan expense cut backs in the coming year and no doubt the calming influence of the 5 star resort they stayed in helped. One of the messages the boss came back with was that the monetary value of expense savings were less important than the message they give.

“Once the staff realise that we have tightened our belts on this issue, it will be easy to whip them into shape. Fear is a great motivator”.

The managers trooped out dejectedly. They had a quick meeting outside the boss’s office and agreed to keep quiet about the stationary freeze in front of their staff. Being a coward is a lot easier when you do it as a group.

Over the coming weeks the staff learned all too well about the freeze. Pens ran out first. People started stealing from their kid brother’s pencil case, so that outsized Bart Simpson pens became common. Highlighters were next to go and the office became monotone as a result. People started clambering under desks to retrieve pens that had been dropped months before and had gathered dust and fluff.

The archiving team was hardest hit. The nice filing envelopes they used were culled. Luckily this was before Ireland’s ban on plastic bags, so a strict re-cycling program was put in place. In years to come, archeologists will find the bank’s archiving site and wonder why Tesco plastic bags were used to store documents for 6 months in 1999.

Frank had been avoiding Eimear since the disappointment of his pay review but he saw this as a chance to impress with little effort. He had a mate who worked in the London office and he emailed him about their dilemma. A week later a box was delivered by courier. When they unwrapped it, a large red cross was drawn on top and somebody had written “Emergency Stationary supplies for our beleaguered colleagues in Dublin”. Frank and Eimear were suddenly overcome with a feeling of shame. The bloody English were patronising us again. Then the opened the box and their mood changed instantly.

“File dividers! I haven’t seen those in months.”

Soon a scrum formed as the team scrambled around the box like starving children at a feeding station. They scurried back to their desks which armfuls of posted notes and refill pads and for a morning at least, Eimear didn’t have to listen to complaints. She took the box to the re-cycle bin and noticed the courier ticket on top. It gave the charge which she knew would be routed back to her department. It was greater than that month’s normal stationary budget.

Eimear smiled. As her boss said, it’s not about the amount of money saved. It’s about the message.

Working for the Yankee Dollar - Part 1

Frank finished College in 1998, having been part of the first batch to benefit from free University Fees. He didn’t know it then but he would be a pioneer in the rise of Ireland’s lower middle class. The people who would later paddle in the shallowness of the Celtic Tiger and measure their worth and the value of others in property and fast cars.

Frank didn’t put a lot of thought into picking his first job. The big American banks had toured his College the previous March and dangled dollar bills in front of the hungover students. Newly emboldened with his degree and surfing the wave of the emerging Irish economy, Frank simply chose the biggest bank and before his feet hit the ground he was sitting behind a desk in Dublin’s gleaming Financial Services Centre, wearing an ill-fitting suit and trying not to be too obvious when eyeing up his new female colleagues.

Those first few months were easy. Frank was smart and realised that he could have his work done by 10.30am but he could skilfully stretch it out till 6pm to demonstrate to his supervisor Eimear that he was a committed soul willing to put in half an hour of unpaid overtime each day. He remembered one word from his initiation course that seemed to by-pass his fellow new hires. They were more interested in the free coffee and muffins. But Frank heard the word “meritocracy” and he was determined to make them live up to it.

The HR woman explained that the bank was proudly American. “We reward individual effort, if you do a good job, it doesn’t matter what the rest of your team, the department or the overall company does. You will be rewarded. We don’t recognise Unions here because we don’t need them. Hard work brings its own rewards”.

These words brought a cold shiver down Frank’s spine. It was the first of many times he would feel that shiver in the years to come. His favourite subject at school was History but his ambitious mother had pushed him in the direction of Commerce so that he would get himself a “good” job. Nevertheless, Frank hankered for the summer he spent back-packing around the World War II sites of Eastern Europe. As he sat listening to the hectoring tones of the woman from HR, he was reminded of the hot day he stood outside Auschwitz and listened to the tour guide translate the sign on the front gate. “Hard work makes you free”. The link between concentration camps and the bureaucrats in Human Resources had been fused in Frank’s mind and the events of the coming years would do little to dispel it.

Frank went into his first staff appraisal in a confident mood. He’d put in six months of deception but had met every target Eimear set him and had skilfully spotted opportunities to do extra tasks if they involved little effort but were highly visible. One of these was to put in half an hour each Friday talking to Eimear in the pub. Frank would have preferred to be talking to the lads about Football, but 30 minutes of chat about bastard boyfriends and the problems of being a female manager in a macho culture was a small price to pay.

But as soon as he walked into the room he could tell from Eimear’s face that the news wasn’t good. “I won’t beat around the bush” she said. “Your performance has been excellent. But we’ve a problem with this year’s pay increases. It’s Argentina you see”.

“What’s Argentina got to do with me”, Frank said. “I’ve never even been there”.

Eimear squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. The management courses she fought so hard to go on didn’t prepare her for times like this. Those courses taught her how to deal with difficult staff. But Frank wasn’t being difficult, he was correct. The company had sold him a lie when it talked about meritocracy and senior management were too chicken to deliver the news themselves. So all around the world on that fateful appraisal day, they left it to junior managers like Eimear to deliver the company message.

“You see Argentina is just the tip of the ice-berg Frank, they’re talking about a global crisis. It seems that we were like, more exposed or something to Argentina than anyone else.”

Frank was enjoying it up to this point. Something in Eimear’s discomfort made him feel powerful and in control. But then he thought of the skiing holiday he’d planned in February and how he was hoping to pay for it with his year end bonus. The prospects of receiving that were melting like the spring snow.

“But I thought we were a global bank, sufficiently diversified to ride a crisis in an individual country? Didn’t we just announce massive profits and say that transactions were at an all time high.”

Eimear paused. The briefing note she got from HR didn’t anticipate staff spotting the fatal flaw in the company’s message. “But they burned down our branch in Buenos Aires” she mumbled, her voice fading with each sentence. “And little old ladies are protesting about us outside the US embassy, saying they’ve lost all their savings”.

Frank leaned across the desk and stared directly at Eimear. “Let me get this straight. I work in Dublin and I’ve worked bloody hard. My team have worked hard and we’re busier than ever. The department is twice the size that it was when I started. And you’re telling me that I’m not getting a pay increase because some old dear in South America has lost her pension”?

“It’s a global financial crisis Frank. If it’s not now it will be in six months. The company has to provide for that. But if you stick around I’m sure we can do something for you next year”.

Frank sat back and sighed. Little did he know that this was just the first excuse of many. The company would continue to make massive profits but conveniently find a crisis every time his pay review came around. He shuffled out and headed to the pub. In future his Friday nights would be spent talking football with the boys.

Isaac and Ishmael

Steve is an ocker Aussie. Likes his footy and his four and twenty meat pies. Speaks with an accent that would make Kath and Kim wince with embarrassment and has even called one of his kids Kiely. Steve is also Jewish and I only realised this when I asked him what he thought of bacon butties as a hangover cure. He’s not a fan needless to say but he was more than willing to fill in the gaps in my simplistic mindset.

Jews have been in Australia as long as Europeans have been here. The early arrivals fulfilled the stereo-types of all those first fleeters. While the Irish on those prison ships were there for various crimes involving animals (stealing them usually as opposed to acts for which New Zealand is now famous) and the English were there for pick-pocketing and other Dickensian crimes, the occasional Jew was being punished for forgery. This made them highly sought after in the new colonies when legal documentation was in its infancy. It also made them popular among the other prisoners because they could knock together a “Ticket of Release” form in a jiffy.

Later Jewish migration followed the periodic upheavals in European history, right up to the fall of the Soviet Empire. Australia opened its doors in particular after World War II, which means that it must be the only country in the world with sizable populations of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi war criminals.

Being Irish of course, I have very little experience of meeting Jewish people. We like to pride ourselves on being the only country in Europe that didn’t persecute Jews, but the truth is we achieved this by not allowing any into the country in the first place. Until recently our only experience of Jewish people was on the pages of Ulysses. And more Irish people have been to a Bar Mitzvah than have read James Joyce’ classic about Leopold Bloom.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been fascinated by the Jewish faith. This has been inspired by my devotion to Woody Allen movies. Through Woody, I like to feel that I share in the existential neurosis of being Jewish. Steve laughed when I told him this. He said judging all Jewish people by the standards of Woody Allen would be like judging all Irish people on the activities of Father Ted.

He told me about the different communities that live here. From the secular to the Hasidic, from the Russians to the Israelis and from the ones like him who considered themselves as Australian to those who insist in speaking Yiddish and dressing like they have just walked off a 17th Century movie set. Like many secular Jews, Steve is suspicious of his Orthodox cousins. He distrusts their piety in the way that I, as a Catholic, distrust Opus Dei and Jesuits. But in the same way that the Devil makes the best music, Steve believes that the Orthodox guys are the top cooks. He suggested that I visit a bakery near where I live that does the best Matzo breakfast in Australia. The bakery is in Elsternwick which is the next suburb over. I’m in St Kilda and it doesn’t really have an ethnic majority although the recent influx of Irish backpackers is trying to change that. It could best be described as Bohemian with its eclectic mix of Italian and eastern European restaurants. It might even have people who are actually from Bohemia.

Elsternwick on the other hand is a Jewish suburb right down to the kosher section in Supermarkets and the Shul on every major intersection. It sits just on the other side of the Nepean Highway from St Kilda but it seems like continents away. Steve’s bakery is on Glenhuntly Road and the food didn’t let me down. One of the great things about living in Melbourne is the amount of fantastic places to have breakfast. I like nothing better than sitting in the window of a café on a Saturday morning and watching the world go by.

On Glenhuntly Road on a weekend morning you can sit on one side of the café window and pretend that it’s Tel Aviv or Lower Manhattan outside. The Orthodox Jews scurry along as though constantly late for an appointment. Whatever the weather is in this City of ever changing climate, they always seem to be dressed the same. Black frock coat, as seen on bouncers and undertakers, black suit with an ornamental Gartel around the waist and a wide brimmed hat keeping the rain and sun off their sumptuous beards and carefully plaited hair. And as the old Woody Allen joke goes, that’s just the women!

Their secular cousins can be found clogging the road in their gas guzzling SUVs as they scuttle between delicatessen and bakery. It’s a scene repeated in many Cities across the East coast of America and it’s indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of this City.

I brought the news of my happy breakfast back to Steve but somehow our conversation veered onto weightier matters. I made the mistake of bringing up Middle Eastern politics and that was like a red rag to a bull. For the next two hours we relived every atrocity in Israel and Lebanon in the last fifty years. Needless to say we got nowhere. Steve reckoned that if Jews didn’t exist, the Arabs would have invented them just to practice anti-Semitism.

I mentioned that Brunswick in North Melbourne is the centre of the City’s Arab population. I’d spent a wonderful Saturday morning there some months ago. We had dined on Arab cakes that day and what struck me after visiting Elsternwick was how similar they were to Jewish ones. Steve smiled and told me the story of Isaac and Ishmael. They were sons of Abraham and Isaac grew up Jewish while his brother Ishmael followed the Islamic faith. And so the troubles in the Middle East began. One thing they had in common however was that they both loved their mother’s buns.

The Olympics of my Youth

I remember one Saturday night when I was 19. In those days Irish summers were long and sultry, or at least that's how they appear in the foggy memories I have now. We were young men filled with lust and lager and we'd meet in Russell’s Bar Saloon with the intention of drinking ourselves towards that delicate nexus where we became brave enough to talk to girls.

It was a volatile balance however. One more pint of Harp and you'd go from talking prose to mumbling meaningless shite. Thankfully, I normally stayed one pint on the side of shyness, which didn't help me in my quest to talk to girls but at least left them thinking I was simply aloof and not a gibbering idiot. Occasionally we'd hit the perfect balance and on those nights we'd take ourselves off to the nightclub.

They weren't called that back then of course. We knew them simply as discos and my home town had lots of them. Our proximity to the border made us a sort of El Paso to Northerners looking for a beer after midnight (the Proddies in Northern Ireland didn’t like people enjoying themselves on Sunday mornings) and the chance to meet a nice Southerner. We offered them a sexy accent of sorts, despite our nasally toned North Louth voices. Our thick tongued mumbles sounded like music compared to their South Armagh screeching. We also offered an escape from the daily routine of road-blocks and army harassment, or at least we pretended we did. We were really only interested in a snog against the car-park wall at 2.30am.

When the disco finished it wasn’t all happy couples skipping towards an evening of romance and shared curry chips. Most customers left unsatisfied in the shifting department and had over indulged in alcohol as a sort of compensation. When mixed with raging testosterone, this became an explosive cocktail. The bouncers kept things in check inside, but once fresh air had tickled the nostrils of the unwanted and unloved, they became like raging bulls and the car-park became their arena. And like a bull-fight, it involved more ritual than uncontrolled rage.

Instead of fighting, guys would do what we used to call “making shapes”. This involved raising fists towards each other while shuffling feet and making threatening statements such as “do you want some” and “does your mother sew, cause I’ll give her something to stitch.” This non-contact dancing would continue for a few minutes until one of the combatants felt brave enough to push the other one in the chest. This aggression would be returned with an equally gentle shrug until friends from both sides would jump in and separate them with soothing words such as “he’s not worth it Frank” and “are you mad Rusty, his mates will kill us”.

This ritual took place (and probably still does) outside discos every Saturday night. Apart from when psychos were involved, nobody ever got really hurt and it acted as a sort of safety valve on the pressurised gas of male aggression.

I thought all those things were behind me, so imagine my surprise when I switched on the telly last week and saw that they’ve turned “making shapes” into an Olympic Sport. The art of Taekwondo is supposed to have originated In Korea in the Middle Ages. I think its origins are much more recent. The Oasis nightclub in Carrickmacross in 1985 for example. The sport requires you to kick your opponent in the chest or head, except nobody ever does. They dance around for about ten minutes, throwing the odd shadow move and grabbing their opponent in a friendly hug. Its martial arts for people who don’t like violence.

Occasionally the referee will step in with a plaintive request, such as “ah jaysus lads, would you not throw the odd slap?” His call is usually unanswered however and they carry on their ritualistic dance until one of them gets bored and gives up. The highlight of the Olympic competition was when the referee got so bored with the proceedings that he invited the contestants to hit him. A large Cuban obliged and Taekwondo got it’s only clean hit of the competition.

But that Korean sport doesn’t even come close to being the most ridiculous of the games. Rhythmic Gymnastics wins that competition hands down (which is actually a high scoring manoeuvre in Rhythmic Gymnastics if you’re interested). For some reason this sport was reserved for the closing days of the games, as though it was some sort of pinnacle to the athletic endeavour that had gone before. The irony of having it so late on the Olympics schedule is that it comes just before the closing ceremony and then you see where it gets it’s inspiration from. The Chinese who flung themselves around the stadium to close out the games performed acts far more impressive than we had seen in competition. Indeed Cirque de Soliel would sweep the medal board in Rhythmic Gymnastics if they chose to take part.

Instead they leave it to a bunch of anorexic Eastern Europeans to twirl ribbons while wearing skimpy swimsuits. The winner is the one who can most resemble a majorette in an American marching band or create the image of a six year old girl playing in a summer garden with her imaginary friend.

The ribbon is not the only obstacles these girls have to overcome. They also have to play with a hulo-hoop, a ball and two juggling clubs that they have to fling in the air and generally contort themselves around. At all times they have to avoid the suggestion of sexuality, despite the clothing and apparatus.

One thing that Rhythmic Gymnastics does do however is to sooth the spirits of the viewer. It is dancing after all and as we demonstrated all those years ago, dancing beats fighting any day. Those car-parks of my youth would have been a lot more peaceful with a few ribbons and the odd girl in a swimsuit.

Whatever happened to Tori Amos

“If music be the food of love....” then that explains why I’m a fat bastard. Because I love music and I’ve been collecting it since I could first afford to. “The Green Fields of France” by the Fureys and Davey Arthur was my first single (and I still sing it in the shower) and my first album was a one third share in “Best Moves” by Chris De Burgh. I got the lyrics, my sister got the instrumental arrangements and my brother got the responsibility of explaining to the world why we spent our Christmas money on something as cringe inducing as Chris De Burgh.

In our defence, I think Chris was a respectable rock star before he lost his interest in music and developed a passion for nannies and minor members of the British Royal family that led him to write the disaster that is “Lady in Red”. That vinyl copy of “Best Moves” is long gone, having been the centre of a messy custody battle between myself and my siblings. I made up for it recently when I bought the CD version of the album and damn the begrudgers, it’s a mighty fine piece of work. Even if “Patricia The Stripper” evokes memories of teenage parties that are best left on the cutting room floor of a therapist’s surgery.

Back filling is something I’ve been doing a lot of recently. Maybe it’s a factor of age or being grumpy but I’m fast reaching the conclusion that nothing good has been produced since 1990 and nothing original has come out since Bob Dylan realised you could plug guitars into amps. So having dabbled in Eninem and Missy Higgins, I’ve recently decided to revert to the Artists I knew and loved in my twenties and teenage years.

This coincided with a significant moment in my musical journey. After three years, I have finally managed to load all 350 of my CDs onto my Ipod. This process turned up a number of oddities. Why exactly did I buy a “Blind Melon” CD? Who are “The Connells”? And why do I have two copies of so many albums? Including ironically, two copies of “Beethoven’s 9th Symphony”. Ironic because it’s the only classical album I own.
It also highlighted the absences in my collection. Where is the Sade that I knew and momentarily loved in the early 80’s (she waved to me once from a tour bus and my gaping mouth didn’t close for two days)? Where is Michelle Shocked, who won me massive cool points when I enquired after her availability in Dundalk’s painfully named record shop “Slipped Disc”?

But the absence that struck me most was Tori Amos. For a while in the late 80’s, before I fell for the charms of female country singers, I thought I’d dip into the pool of melodic pop. Tori’s voice and quirkiness appealed to me and a cassette of hers helped me through the misery of sitting on London’s M25 every day on the way to work. I heard a track of hers recently on the West Wing and as those TV inserts are designed to do, I was prompted to log on and check where she’s been. It turns out that she’s been busy doing that touring and album releasing thing that artists get up to.

So instead of asking “Whatever happened to Tori Amos” she should be asking whatever happened to me.

Luckily, Melbourne is the place to be if you like 80’s music. Madonna was 50 on Saturday, or at least that’s what the Madge tribute band that I went to see in North Melbourne were claiming. I haven’t really been keeping up with Madonna’s birthdays lately, ever since I got no thanks for the large crucifix I bought her for her 21st. I deleted her from my birthday list and have been stalking other 80’s stars since.

The music you get into in your twenties will stick with you for the rest of your life. I’ve dabbled with techno and garage but as I get older I’m drifting back to Abba and the rock anthems on that seminal genius Meat Loaf. 80’s music is a dirty word in Ireland but Australia has no such inhibitions. In fact if you walked into a suburban Melbourne pub on a Saturday night, you’d almost think it was 1985. The fashion doesn’t seem to have changed since then. Mullets are still common and the occasional set of flairs can be seen. And on stage you’ll invariably find a five piece knocking out the music of Gloria Gaynor and Tina Turner.

Live music is popular here in the way that people think it is in Ireland. When in fact in Ireland, you only hear it in the sort of pubs frequented by American tourists and South Armagh Republicans. The Madonna tribute band was typical of what you see here. An all girl band who knocked out 80’s hits like the Berlin wall was still up and the Soviet Union were leading the medals table in the Olympics. Madonna songs were the highlight of their set, but Abba got everyone out of their seats. Dancing Queen will get every woman over the age of thirty swaying their hips and pointing to imaginary objects in the sky.

Abba are massive here and have survived the embarrassment factor that we European fans had to suffer through the 90’s, before they became retro cool again. Movies like Priscilla and Muriel’s Wedding kept the flame burning when the rest of the world thought Abba were the preserve of gays and under tens. There weren’t many members of those social groups in evidence when I recently went to see “Mama Mia” in the picture house. Abba fan and all that I am, I came away thinking that I’d just spent two hours of my life that I’d never get back. It made me think that I need to be pickier about my musical nostalgia. Which makes me think, whatever happened to Suzanne Vega?

Roger Black and the Olympic Spirit

Roger Black is a bit of a hero to me. He helped me win an argument against my old nemesis Snoopy back in 1996. We were watching the Olympics at the time which wasn't easy because they never seem to fall during a convenient time of day for the viewing public. Unless you live in New York of course because that's where they target the TV stuff to.

So back in 1996 we had to sit up late if we wanted to watch the drug fuelled games from Atlanta. Mind you, that suited us on Saturday nights when we piled in from the pub with our curry chips at 2am. Michelle Smith was the Irish darling of that long summer. But we didn't support her. Innocent as we were then, we knew something fishy was going on in the water (if you'll excuse the pun). So our real attention was on the athletics and the soon to be dashed hopes that Sonia O'Sullivan might get the gold medal she so richly deserved. One Saturday night we gathered in Cathal's front room to cheer Sonia home. The men's 400 meters was an appetiser and while the yanks were hot favourites, Roger Black managed to split Michael Johnson from the rest of the Americans in the field.

Snoopy likes to see himself as an expert on all things Olympian. In fact he likes to see himself as an expert on everything which is probably why we had so many arguments as that's an arrogance I like to reserve for myself. He offered himself to us as a sort of coffee table edition of the Big Book of Olympic Facts. Every now and again, we'd dip in and find out who won the women's trap shooting at the Antwerp games (Antwerp always seemed to be his specialist subject) or who was the white guy on the podium during the black power clenched fist protest in 1968.

Just before the final of the 400 meters, Snoopy drifted away from the safe shores of fact and into the dangerous waters of opinion. He exclaimed that the Americans were hindered by the petty rules of the Olympic committee in that they were restricted to a maximum of three competitors in each race. Snoopy was of the opinion that the yanks would have filled the top eight places in the final if they had been allowed to enter that many.

45 seconds or so later, Britain's Roger Black stormed home in second place. I smugly turned to Snoopy and pointed out the folly of his argument. If Roger Black could beat the second best American, then surely he would have accounted for the 4th, 5th and 6th best as well. Snoopy was a bit like Roger Black however, in that he never gave up. He launched into an existential discussion on infinite universes, in one of which at least, his theory would be proved correct. I think it's the only argument I've ever won with Snoopy.

There is no Sonia to watch in 2008 unfortunately and Irish interest is limited to letting the world know that our engineers built that Bird's Nest contraption in Beijing. So given that I now live in the Land of Oz, I thought I'd throw my lot in with the Green and Gold. But having watched four days of Channel 7's coverage, I'm not so sure. I don't think that German State radio in 1936 could be as jingoistic and one eyed as Channel 7. Not only do they limit their coverage to events that Australians compete in, but they can even contrive their camera positions to show Australians in a swim race and stay oblivious to the fact that Michael Phelps is 20 meters ahead of them.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of your country of course. We Irish make an art form out of it. But Australia struggles for a national identity and looks to sport to provide one. They used to be content with beating England at Cricket, but now that pretty much every one can do that, they've turned their attention to beating the Americans in swimming. It’s a strange sport because you need to be a physical freak to be any good at it. All the top guys have webbed feet and shoulders as wide as Michelle Smith’s drug cabinet. And it’s hard to respect any sport where you have to shave your chest to stand a chance of winning. Although that did help Michelle win those medals back in Atlanta. Personally, I go with Woody Allen on this one and think us humans evolved from water millions of years ago and it seems strange that some people are desperate to get back into it.

But Australia throws millions into swimming, most of which seems to go at finding a replacement for Ian Thorpe. They haven’t managed that yet, but they have turned up some great female swimmers, most of whom seem have names like Libby and Bronte. I don’t want to appear like a reverse snob, but it’s clear what sort of social background swimmers come from. I guess it helps if you grew up with a pool in your back garden. The women don’t look as freakish as the men, although it’s hard to tell now that they wear those all over swim suits. Many a young man got his first thrill looking at Marlene Otto climbing out of the pool. Now those 15 year olds have only the beach volley ball to enjoy. And let’s just say, I hope they are not boob men.

But hope is at hand. We Irish seem to have lost interest in most Olympic sports as the Celtic Tiger made us fat and lazy. The boxers however come from backgrounds untouched by the decadence of the last ten years. The Cubans are expected to win all the medals. But maybe we have a Roger Black in our boxing team and we can surprise everyone, including Snoopy. If we did, it might be the best Olympics since Antwerp.

My Life as David Attenborough

I've never been into animals. Apart from eating them I hear you say. I think its because animals were never really into me. Maybe they picked up things, but cats have always looked at me like I'm the Pol Pot of the feline world (which secretly I am). Dogs bark when I walk into a room just to let me know that they are in charge and even goldfish turn their back on me every 15 seconds when I look at them.

But when I came to Australia I thought I'd take a bit more interest.
After all, this is a country that boasts animals so weird that you would
have to assume that God took no part in their creation. Instead they
were designed by a committee and a drunk one at that. The duck
billed platypus comes to mind. When you're stuck with a ridiculous
beak, it doesn't help that the committee decided that you should be
nearly blind as well. I guess their reasoning was that this way, the
poor old platypus wouldn't get to see how ugly he is.

I've spent the last year overcoming my fears, donning my khaki shorts
and taking to the bush like David Attenborough. And what is the sum
total of my wildlife investigations? A couple of possums and a single
kangaroo. And I nearly ran him over in my enthusiasm to see him.
Twelve months of searching and I've yet to see a koala, snake,
wombat, shark or even the poor ugly platypus. Before I came here a
friend warned that I should check under the toilet seat every time I
heard the call of nature because he was convinced that the dreaded
red backed spider dwelled there just waiting to bite the bum of
unsuspecting immigrants. But I haven't even seen one of these,
despite spending an inordinate amount of time in the dunny.

So it came as no surprise to me when I read an article recently that
said that the animals here aren't nearly as scary as the tourist
industry would have you believe. I have this theory that Australia
plays on it's reputation of having the most dangerous animals in the
world. If the snakes or spiders don't get you on land, you can always
head for a dip, where the sharks and poisonous jellyfish will be
waiting for you. The truth is less exciting. I've met many Australians
who have neverseen an animal more dangerous than a cat in a bad
mood.

The article was about which animals are most likely to kill you in
Australia. I imagined it might be crocodiles, because I seem to
remember lots of stories about tourists taking a dip in the rivers of
the Northern Territory and finding themselves transformed into the
interior lining of a crocodile skin handbag. Or maybe kangaroos
because they seem to have a predilection for hopping out in front of
cars and causing their drivers to swerve and hit things they weren't
planning to.

But it turns out that horses are the creatures most likely to kill you
here.

Now before you think that the equine population here are equipped
with flick-knives and sub machine guns, I have to report that the
evidence is more prosaic. Most deaths caused by horses are due to
people falling off them, a fact that surprises me not in the least. My
friend Sinead might disagree but why would you climb up on
something two metres tall that likes jumping over hedges? I have
a small confession to make here. I've eaten more horse than I've
ridden, a fact that applies to all animals now that I think of it. So I
think I'm fairly safe from being killed by one of these beasts, unless
I'm answering the call of nature behind a hedge and am too busy
checking for red backed spiders to notice the thundering hooves
approach.

Cows come second in the killer list. A little unfortunate I feel
because bovine animals are a tad docile. Twenty people have
died in the last six years after hitting cows. Before you conjure up
images of an Australian pastime of cow slapping, I should point out
that the unfortunate deceased were driving cars and motorbikes
at the time of their unplanned meeting with the animal. Reports of
the cow's health in these incidents are sketchy.

It reminds me of the time I was sitting in a friend's front room
when word arrived that his brother had been involved in a
traffic accident. His father was dispatched to the hospital and
returned an hour later with his patched up son. We waited
anxiously for news but were all afraid to ask. Eventually, the
mother piped up and enquired, "what happened"? With a
mixture of shame and shock, the injured son looked up and
said, "I came around a corner hit a cow going at 70mph".
There was an embarrassing silence before I said "Jeez, that
was a fast cow". I wasn't invited back.

Dogs are the next most terrifying creatures, although you are
as likely to die from tripping over one as you are from being
attacked by rabid fangs. You have to get down to number four
before getting into the traditionally dangerous animals. On
average, two people are killed each year in Australia by
sharks. About the same number who die from hyperthermia
after swimming in the seas off Ireland.

Back on land, snakes and spiders account for only marginally
more fatalities than Emus', cats and fish. This confirms everything
I've suspected about cats. They are the hand tool of the devil and
should be dealt with accordingly.

So if you are reading this from abroad and are contemplating a
trip here but are nervous about the environment, then fear not.
The wildlife is hard enough to find never mind trying to get close
enough for them to do any damage. You are much more likely to
be hit by a tram in Melbourne, get sunstroke in Queensland or
pick up a dodgy itch in Sydney's Kings Cross. It's a pretty safe
place and my only advice would be to slow down when going round
corners. You never know, but there might be a speeding cow
coming towards you!