Friday 25 April 2008

And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda

April 25th is Anzac Day and is the closest thing I’ve seen to Good Friday in Ireland. Not so much because of the celebration of death (one person died in 33AD on Good Friday and thousands died on Anzac Day in 1915) but more because of the lack of alcohol. Pubs close on two days in Ireland. Good Friday and Christmas Day. You’re generally sorted for the latter through the generous quantities of Whiskey and Blue Nun wine that your parents have been stocking up since September. And it’s rude (and usually too cold) to leave the house on Christmas Day anyway.

Good Friday is another thing altogether. Modern Ireland has lost most of its spirituality and sense of tradition. In the old days, we fasted on Good Friday having endured 40 days of chocolate or sugar in tea denial. Fasting wasn’t quite starving yourself. You were still allowed one main meal and two collations. The collations exercised my mind as a youngster. As a young child I thought my Dad was saying “relations” which pleased my immensely. The Good Friday main meal was normally frugal, consisting of smoked fish and some indigestible white sauce that tasted like the nasal outpourings of a diseased skunk. So the thought of eating two cousins for breakfast and tea was a thrilling prospect. I had some very fat cousins.

As I got older, I learned that collations are a meal not exceeding seven ounces. My Dad used to wind us up by getting the baking scales out and weighing our cornflakes on Good Friday morning. I guess in his own way he was trying to make us feel the pain of Christ on his way to Cavalry. The Catholic Church has some weird similes like that.

Now as an adult, I’m able to look up Wikipedia and see that “In the Roman Catholic Church, the term collation is used to describe each of the two small meals allowed on days of fasting (with or without abstinence). The term originated in Benedictine monasteries where the reading of excerpts from The Lives of the Fathers (Collationes Patrum), written by John Cassian, was followed by a light meal.”
And there was me thinking that Dad had made it all up.
All that is gone now of course, along with Corpus Christi processions, getting soot on your forehead on Ash Wednesday and standing round rock pools on August 15th waiting for the water to miraculously rise. They were part of a simpler, more innocent Ireland before Starbucks and pre marital sex.

But for some reason, the pubs still close on Good Friday. This leads to panic stocking up on Holy Thursday (although I don’t know why we still call it that when nobody treats it as Holy anymore) and impromptu house parties. For those of us who grew up close to the border, Good Friday was the only day of the year when we applauded the Protestant controlled government of Northern Ireland. They might have closed the pubs up there every Sunday but they opened them on Good Friday just to annoy the Catholics. In one of those beautiful ironies that comes from bigotry, most of the patrons in the pubs were Catholics. Feckless alcoholics that we are.

We’d sneak across the border and drink guiltily in the gin palaces of South Armagh. Getting back was always fun as you’d be three sheets to wind and so had to avoid the British Army, Police and IRA checkpoints. The IRA ones generally didn’t care if you were drunk, but you didn’t want to accidentally run over one of those boys in the dark.

Anzac Day in Australia is similar. People go to extremes to drink, like visiting RSL pubs (the only ones allowed to open during the day) to sit at formica tables and watch ninety year olds play cards. Ninety thousand of them pitch up at the MCG to see the two most hated teams in AFL take lumps out of each other just so they can drink at the bar at halftime.

Many Australians will rise at dawn and make their way to War memorials to remember those who fell at Gallipoli and other far flung shores. Gallipoli is seared into the Australian psyche; mainly it provides an opportunity to bash the English for poor management and to exert Australian independence. Few people here mention the fact that Australians traveled half way round the world in 1915 to invade somebody else’s country and had their arse kicked in the process. And I wonder how the large Turkish population in Australia feels on April 25th? They won the battle of Gallipoli but don’t seem to get invited to the party.

Isn’t it strange though how countries prefer to remember military defeats rather than victories? In Ireland we commemorate the glorious failure that was the Easter Rising. The English like nothing better than to talk about the Dunkirk Spirit, as though running away was anything to be proud of. If it was, the Italians would have a celebration every day of the year. And even the jingoistic Yanks love making movies about Vietnam.

There seems to be something nobler about glorious defeat as opposed to the jingoism of victory.

I guess that there is nobody left who stood on that beach in Turkey in 1915. But there are plenty of old men left who fought in Malaya and Papua New Guinea in World War Two and maybe they’ll be joined by Vietnam and Iraq veterans. Every generation of Australians since the founding of the Federation have found an excuse to spill their blood upon a foreign field. Their battles become less popular but it does nothing to diminish their sacrifice. To die in Kandahar in 2008 is just as miserable and pointless as falling on the beach in 1915.

In sixty years time, the survivors of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will gather at the war memorials as tired old men. One can only hope that the pubs will be open then for them to enjoy a pint afterwards.

Monday 14 April 2008

Stand Up Comedy-One Night Only


Welcome to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and thanks for dropping by. I can’t see you too well, what with the lights and everything, but I’ll assume the hall is full. That fits into my feeling of paranoia. I’ve always assumed that people are following me. Unfortunately, I’ve got low self esteem. So I assume these aren’t very important people. But please don’t take that as an insult. See I also suffer from a fear of upsetting people.

I’m part of the meek population. We’re the ones that God says will inherit the earth. But being meek, we’ll feel overwhelmed with the responsibility and say to God “No actually, if you don’t mind, you can give the Earth to someone else. We’ll just stay here and stare at our shoes.”

I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous about this as it’s my first public performance. You tell yourself these jokes in front of the mirror but when you start laughing at them, you convince yourself you’re mental. That stops you laughing and then you get depressed at how fat you look and start to notice the tuffs on your chin that you forgot to shave.

Blokes shouldn’t really look at themselves in mirrors. We’re programmed to think of women as good looking, so staring at yourself can be a little unsettling. Girls on the other hand are happy admiring other girls, which is just as well because blokes like looking at them doing it.

They make you fill out a form before you can take part in this comedy festival. It asks loads of personal questions for reasons that have to be evil. Why do they need to know your mother’s maiden name? Are they trying to check whether they dated her in an earlier life, so as to avoid embarrassment later?

I had to answer that question about eye colour. As I was standing in front of a mirror telling stories to myself, I took the opportunity to check. Guys only know three colours. Red, Blue and Green. We think Peach and Orange are fruits and that Magenta is a porn star’s name. I figured my eyes couldn’t be blue or red, despite all the booze and lack of sleep. So green they must be. Imagine my surprise when I looked and saw that they were mainly white!

But enough of the observational stuff. What’s been happening in the news? Well I see that poor old Charlton Heston is dead. No doubt the anti gun lobby are currently trying to snatch the rifle from his cold dead hands. They’d do well to remember one of his most famous quotes. “Guns don’t kill people. It’s the little bullets that come out of the guns that kill people”.

Sage words indeed, but that’s no surprise given the biblical characters that Charlton played down the years. His gun totting attitude got him into a lot of trouble on those sets though. He tried to get them to rewrite “The Ten Commandments” so that when Moses is expelled from the land of Egypt, he retaliates with a blast from his legally held AK47 assault rifle. And he caused more trouble on the set of “The Greatest Story Ever Told” when he tried to slip a rifle under his John the Baptist tunic so as to blow Salome’s head off instead of his.

Charlton is a big hero of the religious right in America, which is ironic because his most famous role was a vindication of evolution. Except that “Planet of the Apes” suggests that apes evolved from men and not the other way round. By the way, did any of you find that one of your early sexual experiences was to fancy the female ape in Planet of the Apes? Still bothers me that one.

Americans are weird about their guns. Just because a document written 230 years ago says “We uphold the right of all men to bear arms” doesn’t mean you have to stick by it now. If that was the case, Italians would still think it was OK to marry horses and England would still think it ruled most of the world. OK maybe that last bit is still true, but the yanks are on dodgy ground if they are relying on old documents. I mean there were a lot of misprints in those days. What if the revolutionary American army was short of men and wanted to enlist trained grizzly’s from Yellowstone national park (Imagine Yogi and Boo-boo in military fatigues and you’ll get the picture). Jefferson turns to Washington and says “We better write this down”. But somewhere in the process “We uphold the right of all men to arm bears” gets screwed up and before you know where you are, you’ve 300 million guns and defenceless bears being shot at. As Alanis Morrisette would say, “Now isn’t that ironic”.

Talking of ironic, I’ve been looking around Melbourne lately. You guys have a great City. But you’re a bit boring with the names. How many dead white men can there be? But the Harold Holt swimming pool in Malvern makes up for this. What delicious imagination you need to call a swimming pool after someone who drowned. Harold was Prime Minister of Australia in 1967, when he mysteriously disappeared at sea. Calling a swimming pool after him would be like Dallas opening the “John F Kennedy Memorial Rifle Range” or Buckingham Palace launching the “Princess Diana Memorial Driving School”.

Harold may well be enjoying the irony because many people believe he didn’t drown at all but was picked up by a Chinese submarine and whisked back to Beijing. But I prefer to think that he’s up above, arguing with God about how he’s too meek to inherit the earth. Last week Charlton Heston arrived in heaven. St. Peter said, “what did you die off?” To which Heston replied “A Tuesday”. St. Peter didn’t laugh as he’d heard that joke from every dead Irish person since 1850.

“What killed you?”

“The Big C”.

“Right” said St. Peter. “You can share with Harold Holt. The same thing happened him in 1967”.

You’ve been a great audience, goodnight.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

Away with the Birds


Ornithology is not a subject that was close to my heart in Ireland. I’m sure that are beautiful birds there but to me they all looked the same. Well OK, I can tell the difference between a swan and a robin redbreast but most of the ones in between just look like small brown or black things with angry faces.

Victoria on the other hand has every variety under the sun and a few more besides that shirk God’s rays and only come out in the twilight hours.

Pigeons seem to be the dominant species, in the City at least. Many people consider them to be rats with wings, but rats wouldn’t be so cheeky or oblivious to the public around them. They thrive on Burke Street where the rubbish of a million shoppers provides ample nourishment.

As I waited for a tram yesterday on the corner of Burke and Swanston, I spotted a clever member of the pigeon population who had realised that a bounty awaited him within the groove of the tram tracks. He swooped from a great height and made for a tasty morsel trapped in the rails. He stood astride the metal bar and poked to his heart’s content, seemingly unaware that he was placing himself directly in the path of the wheel of the oncoming tram.

A small group of us assembled to see if he would be crushed. It was a morbid gathering it must be said but none of us seemed the least bit concerned at the imminent prospect of feathers and blood adorning the footpath. Perhaps like me, they had lost sympathy for our grey feathered friends and were equally curious as to why none of these birds ever seem to come to harm, despite hurtling themselves between tramlines, buses and the swaying bags of inconsiderate back-packers.

Down the street the 96 tram trundled and we waited to see if the pigeon would notice. He seemed oblivious to the imminent danger and pointed his backside defiantly to the on-coming vehicle. He pecked on as the tram grew ever closer, its wheels creaking along the metal groove. The tram driver rang his bell and for a moment the world stood still.

I wondered would the street miss one pigeon. They seemed to have so many after all. They love the fast food restaurants and sandwich shops that service the City centre. Most of these shops leave their doors open in summer, in order to tempt the passing public with the aroma of fresh bread or fried chicken.

Unfortunately, it also tempts the birds. The little sparrows attack anything on the ground, while the pigeons take on the tables and benches. Last week, I passed KFC where inside 12 pigeons were gathered round an abandoned tray of nuggets and chips like the apostles at the last supper and were busy tucking in while the staff and customers went about their business as though the birds weren’t there.

I wouldn’t call myself squeamish but it strikes me as odd that a City that prides itself on cleanliness in the area of parklands and street cleaning should be so lax when it comes to feral birds.

A little bit outside the city centre, the sea-gulls reign. Melbourne is a maritime city, but it’s strange how far inland they roam. Their favorite venue appears to be the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Maybe they’re there all the time but you only really notice them when a match is on TV.

They drift in one by one and gather on the pitch oblivious to the 36 players on the field and the 70,000 watching in the stands. I don’t know if they are there for the worms or whether they are like the rest of Melbourne and are just mad about the Footy.

The players seem immune to their presence in fairness and there seems to be an unspoken rule to avoid the part of the pitch occupied by the birds. The Argentinean soccer team that played there last October hadn’t been let in on this secret. They thought they had stumbled onto the set of a Hitchcock remake. Messi was so traumatised he hasn’t played for Barcelona since.

A little further out in the parklands that run alongside the Yarra River, the bats are king. Bats get a bad rap in mythology. Dracula, vampires and being extras in every horror movie since Nosferatu.

But when you see one up close, you can see that this reputation is entirely justified. It’s hard to imagine that there is an uglier animal in existence, although the Manchester United team of 1999 would give them a good run for their money.

To their credit, bats seem to be social creatures. They congregate in their thousands among the tall gum trees that garland the riverbank. They hang upside down and cry out to each other in blood curdling shrieks until the riverside becomes a cathedral of noise and faintly unpleasant smells.

Then at twilight they drop from their lofty perches and glide down the valley. The slow swish of their massive wings sounds like an armada of attack helicopters and the sky darkens as they depart on mass, in search of bloody prey and the opportunity to scare young children.

Watching them I found was the perfect way to spend St Valentines Day!

There are of course beautiful birds here too. Gayly colored parrots are common; their red and green feathers offer a welcome distraction from the parched earth of a Victorian summer. Galah’s live in the suburbs because farmers hate them. Their pink and grey plumage brightens the suburban sky and the bright brush on their heads gives them the majestic look of an Indian Maharaja.

I guess Australia has the advantage of having had a full complement of beautiful native birds before the white man got here and has added several hundred species of European birds in the meantime.

That’s the only explanation I can come to for why there are so many birds here. Or perhaps they are just indestructible. You regularly read about people being hit by trams but you never see dead birds in the street.

Our hungry friend confirmed that yesterday. The tram was about 10cm from his exposed behind when he flew off without as much as a backward glance. Maybe it’s peripheral vision or motion sensitivity that keeps them safe. Or perhaps they’ve sold their souls to the satanic rats in return for immortality.

The clocks went back this weekend and winter is approaching. I can hear the bats as I write. Perhaps the latter option is not so fanciful.