Wednesday 23 December 2009

Around the World in 13 Days Part 3. The voyage to Columbus

The Fado Irish Bar in Columbus was busy on Saturday morning. Like most fake Irish pubs around the world, Fado had multiple TV screens all showing English football. Much as I despise this cultural hi-jacking, I am enough of a hypocrite to immerse myself in it occasionally.

I pushed my way past the replica jersey wearing masses and found the TV at the back that was showing the Arsenal game. Space was tight and I was anxious to try out the “Full Irish Breakfast” which promised more cooked pig than you could shake an artery at. So I found a seat at the corner of a table where three blond, blue eyed American kids were watching the game, bedecked in 1979 Cup final replica shirts. I assumed their Dad was an English exile, cursed to live out his later years in the mind numbing emptiness that is mid west America.

But when he came over to check on them, it turned out that he too was a died in the wool yank, as where most of the other viewers. It seems that the pandemic of English football knows no boundaries. White Americans are the latest cheerleaders.

Having consumed the vast amounts of pig presented to me and having celebrated another great win with my three young friends; I left Fado and headed for the mall to prostrate myself before the God of American consumerism. I’d spent all week working in a dark windowless room and this would be my first chance to see Columbus properly. I had low expectations and sadly they were entirely met.

I had arrived at midnight six days earlier and found that my bag had miraculously made it through three flight connections. It’s a sad indictment of modern travel that we are pleasantly surprised when something works. I caught a cab to the Hotel and peered into the murky darkness to get some sense of what Ohio looks like. I couldn’t see much, but as it turned out, there isn’t much to see in daylight hours either.

Ohio is one of the fly-over States. Those you fly over when trying to get to interesting places on either coast. You have to wonder therefore why people live in places like Columbus. In the 19th Century there were gold rushes and a thirst for farming land that drove pioneers inland. But in the 21st Century what would make the average yank move there, rather than New York, New Orleans or Los Angeles? Or for that matter, what makes the poor unfortunates who are born there decide to stay?

Perhaps they like the emptiness, the big sky and the straight roads. Or maybe they just don’t like crowds and the smell of saltwater. Whatever the reason, Columbus is now a City of almost a million people, some of whom have even seen the big world outside and still decided to stay.

The Easton mall, which was luring my dollars on this Saturday morning, is unusual by American standards in that it at least tries to look like a normal town. That’s fine in summer I’m sure, but an outdoor mall is less alluring when it’s minus three and falling. I’ve become a soft Aussie in the last couple of years and I’ve grown intolerant to the cold. My mood wasn’t helped when I noted the type of shops that populated the mall. They were aimed at the more discerning customer, one willing to pay ridiculous amounts for designer gear. I’m more the Walmart kind of guy and was hoping to find one of those gargantuan factory stores for which America is famous. The sort of place that sells T-shirts up to XXXXXL and jeans for five bucks. Instead I found perfumed shops that would not have looked out of place on the Champs-Elysees .

So I jumped into a cab and hightailed it for the City, assuming I’d find more of the real America there. Unfortunately, America had packed its bags and headed to the suburbs for the weekend. Maybe there was a time when American city centres were vibrant at weekends. But I’m guessing that’s before the black folks got uppity and started demanding equal rights. The white people fled to the suburbs were they could watch English football in fake pubs and educate their kids in mono cultural schools.

America is the most ethnically mixed country in the world, yet it’s also the most ghettoised. I walked from North Columbus to the South through the Central Business district with its empty, gleaming skyscrapers and shuttered up coffee shops. I guess the cold didn’t help, but the streets were deserted apart from occasional groups of young black guys dressed in out sized puffy jackets and baseball caps worn at strange angles.

I suddenly felt very white and thought of all those episodes of “The Wire” I’d watched over the previous month. But confidence is everything and I struck my best James Deane pose and imagined I was strolling down the boulevard of broken dreams. Nobody mugged me or tried to sell me drugs. Like me, the street corner guys seemed only interested in avoiding the cold. Preconceptions are generally unfair on people.

My destination in the south was the German village which the guidebooks suggested was a little slice of Bavaria in the mid west. It turned out to be less German than the Queen of England. But it did have an authentic American Bar, with high stools at the counter and a world weary barman who knew everyone’s order before they did. I pulled up a stool and ordered a beer and a burger, just so people wouldn’t think I was an outsider. The TV behind the bar was showing a college football game between Florida State and Alabama and I quickly became immersed in it. Most Americans prefer college sport to the professional game and it’s easy to see why. It’s faster, less cautious and the crowds are vocal. I suddenly thought that Columbus wasn’t such a bad place after all.

But as I trudged out into the cold, I was reminded of Dr Johnson’s comments about the Giant Causeway. It’s worth seeing, but not worth going to see.

Thursday 17 December 2009

From Dante to Dublin

Dante’s Inferno described the nine stages of hell. I used to think there were only seven, but that was before George Bush became president. If there is an airport to bring you between these stages, then surely it is based on London’s Heathrow.

To spend four hours there is a punishment not unlike that found in Abu Graib. The endless queuing is akin to water boarding and they even take your picture in a humiliating manner as a nod those human pyramids the American guards built.

I arrived at 5.30am after a long flight from Singapore. Most airports around the world appreciate the discomfort that passengers are in at this point and that many will not speak the local language and may not have travelled abroad before. So airports are usually high ceilinged, well lit and with directions in multiple tongues. Heathrow on the other hand, chooses to ignore the fact that its passengers come from all round the world and may be tired and grumpy. And you’d do well to find a sign that’s not in English and is useful for that matter.

My first task was to get from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1. This involves a trek down endless corridors, long queues for buses and several interruptions to have your body, baggage and dignity scanned. The picture taking is at least novel. Why they need to photograph travellers in transit is a mystery. A security fetish for the age we live in, I guess.

Once you have navigated the Orwellian world of International Transfers, you have the pleasure of arriving in Terminal 1. This should really be renamed “Terminal Cancer” and it conjures up the same feeling. The Irish flights go from specific gates at the end of a long corridor constructed from corrugated iron and Lego. It has the look and feel of a temporary structure that went up fifteen years ago and has been forgotten about.

When you finally get on the Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, you feel that you are back in Ireland. Modern Ireland at least, as most of the crew and passengers are Polish or Chinese. Dublin airport itself seems to be a never ending building site, showcasing a project that started in the boom times and now looks grotesque in the penny pinching era we live in. It reminded me that Ireland will be a great country when it’s finished.

I had only 48 hours to spare in the home country, so planning was essential if I was to cover everything I wanted to do. Visiting family and friends were at the top of the list, but just behind them came the practical things that I miss about home. Curry chips, Guinness and sausages just about sums that up. I had also managed to skilfully organise my trip to coincide with the final performance of Leeson Park Players epic production of “Blithe Spirit”. So that became the highlight of my trip, with apologies to the Lads who provided a thoroughly enjoyable Friday night in Dundalk (with special mention to the curry chips on the way home).

I treaded the boards at LPP for ten years, cornering the niche market in terrorists, farmers and village idiots. My proudest moment was when one of the grandees of the group came up to me after a performance and said “You do gormless better than anyone in the company”. But I’ve never actually watched a performance from the audience. It was a nerve-wrecking event. I’ve been in enough plays to recognise the nervous energy that can consume a cast and found that building in act 1.

My old mate Charles was playing the part of a sceptical doctor, which I’m sure Noel Coward wrote as a serious character. Anyone who has ever acted with Charles would know that he brings his infectious sense of humour to the stage. I’ve stood in front of 200 hundred people with him on several occasions and struggled to keep in the giggles when he diverts from the script and throws you one of his trademark cheeky grins. The cast this time weren’t as stoic and they erupted into a fit of giggles half way through act 1. I had to watch this section through gaps in my fingers. Thankfully, professionalism kicked in and we were treated to a rollicking second act.

Afterwards, I slipped backstage and took the opportunity to step once more onto a stage I last graced in April 2007 and which holds most of my favourite memories from my years living in Dublin. It was an emotional few minutes, partly blurred by the onset of jetlag and the nagging thought of a long flight yet to come.

The cast and crew party afterwards was a tame event when compared to the nights we used to have in the Northbrook Hotel. If there is one crime for which the Celtic Tiger cannot be forgiven, it is the money grabbing decision to convert this fine establishment into apartments. We used to party until morning there, often re-enacting particularly dramatic scenes from the play we had just completed.

The party venue now has a strict 1am closing policy and that hardly allows time to get merry enough to sing. We retired to Eddie Rockets for a fake American Dining experience and ended up drinking tea in the greasiest spoon that Ranelagh has to offer. I finished the night with two friends who are very dear to me. I had booked a hotel at the airport which was by now looking like a bit of an extravagance. At 5am the tiredness finally defeated me. I hailed a taxi and said my sad farewells. It’s never easy saying goodbye, particularly when you’re numb from lack of sleep.

As the taxi raced through the early morning gloom, I got to see Dublin in all its filthy majesty. A freezing fog hung over the City and the revellers left on the streets had their coats tightly held against the wind and rain. It can be a cold and miserable place, but the warmth of friendship makes you forget about that for a while.

Friday 11 December 2009

Round the World in 13 Days - Part 1

They say it’s often better to travel than to arrive. If that was the case somebody would be offering circular flights that bring you back to the place you’ve just left.

Personally I’m waiting for molecular transportation to be invented. I’d have no problem with my body been split into atoms and reassembled instantaneously at the other side of the world. You never know, they might mess up and I’d be put together again looking like Brad Pitt. It’s a better risk to take than losing your luggage in the modern world.

But if you are going to travel long distances, then flying at the front of the bus is the only way to do it, particularly when you are as rotund as I am. So thankfully that’s where I sat as I set off to travel around the world in thirteen days.

My first stop was Singapore, seven hours and change from Melbourne, which seemed measly when I contemplated the journey yet to come. Singapore is one of my favourite destinations. I got there at midnight and the steamy smell hit me first with a kick of recognition. There is an aroma which is distinctly Singaporean and conjures up images of outdoor food courts with tailless cats scurrying between the legs of sweaty cooks.

I took a walk to clear my head after the long flight and came across a late night market. I grabbed a ridiculously cheap Nasi Goreng and hit the hay, dreaming of airplane tail lights and the never ending hum of jet engines.

I awoke with one of those uncomfortable feelings you get when you can’t remember which country you are in, never mind which bed. I had entered the room in darkness the night before and forgot to close the curtains. The sultry Singaporean morning woke me and I stumbled sleepily to the window to admire the view. The sight was incredible. Gambling has always been illegal in Singapore, but they have watched enviously as millions of Asians pass through the casinos of Macau each year to fill their minds with dreams while emptying their wallets.

Singapore has finally embraced this gambling culture and is building two massive casinos to cash in (if you’ll excuse the pun). The one at Marina Bay is almost complete and filled the view from my hotel window. As an Irishman, I know many people in the building trade and I have been known to spend a passing minute or two on the Discovery Building channel. The Marina Bay Casino surpasses anything I’ve seen before and no doubt is being built by all those Irish engineers who are at a loose end since the Celtic Tiger picked up his ball and said he wasn’t playing anymore.

I spent the day in the Singapore office, pretending to work but really just waiting for Happy Hour to start. A beer in this otherwise cheap City can cost $15 which is about the same as you’d pay for a three course meal. So Happy Hour is the only way to go. My drinking buddy for the night suggested a food court in the City Centre called Lau Pau Sat. Apparently it has some of the best hawker food in the country. I’d like to provide a culinary report on this but unfortunately we never got past the beer counter which was selling jugs of Tiger Beer at marginally less than the cost of a small home.

We attacked the beer with the thirst of men that can only be created by the sort of humidity that Singapore is happy to provide. When Happy Hour finished, it had succeeded in its promised objective. We merrily made our way down to Boat Quay, where Nick Leeson used to party with the other red faced expats. We took out a mortgage and bought a couple of beers. I believe we spent the last hour plotting the takeover of the Asian Investment Industry, but we probably just talked about football.

I jumped in to a cab and when we got to the airport, I handed the driver all the Singaporean money I had in my wallet and told him to keep the change with the sort of grand gesture normally reserved for Arab sheiks and rock stars. He counted my collection of coins and told me I was $1.50 short. He smiled and said I could treat it like a reverse tip. My opinion of taxi drivers changed instantly and I promised myself that I would repay this karma. Thankfully, I had the opportunity ten days later.

The flight to London was long, hot and uncomfortable, despite the extra room provided by the Business Class seat and the copious amounts of alcohol that the crew ply on you after take-off in an effort to make everyone sleep. But at least I did get to see the new Woody Allen movie ‘Whatever Works’. Not one of Woody’s best it must be said, but it still had more laugh out loud moments than the rest of the dross offered on the Qantas entertainment system. Unfortunately, loud guffaws are fine if you are in a movie theatre sharing the experience with a couple of hundred like minded fans or watching a DVD in the privacy of your home. It’s not such a polite thing to do when you are locked in a tin box at 35,000 feet with 300 other sleeping passengers.

Mind you, it wasn’t as bad as the experience I had later on that flight while watching ‘Bruno’. In a movie filled with embarrassing scenes, there is one where Mr Cohen displays his John Thomas on screen for what seems an eternity. After 30 seconds or so I had to look away and caught the eye of the old age pensioner across the aisle. He looked at my screen and then back at me with a look of shock. I struggled to find the off button on the remote control beneath my blanket before realising that my furtive scrambling was giving out the completely wrong message!

Tuesday 24 November 2009

The Frog that croaked "Rob it, Rob it"

Where were you when France stole our World Cup Dream? I reckon it is our JFK moment and in years to come it will be remembered by Irish people in the same way that Mr Kennedy’s untimely death is. Millions will claim to have to been in Paris on the night Henry handled the ball and the story will be embellished with each telling to the point where the incident will have happened deep into injury time after six of the Irish players had been knocked out by a mysterious gas secreted by the French secret service.

Oliver Stone will make a conspiracy movie on the issue with Will Smith in the part of Thierry Henry and Lloyd Bridges in the role of Trappatoni.

I was in a cafe on Melbourne’s South Bank when the game went to extra time. I had a meeting arranged for 9am in an Accountant’s office. I watched the first half at home and gambled that the biggest Irish pub in Melbourne would be showing the game which would allow me to catch the last twenty minutes.

Alas, PJ O’Briens is an Irish bar in name only. I have railed on here in the past about themed Irish bars and my experience last Thursday did nothing to change my mind. PJ’s doors were firmly locked with nothing to show that they actually realised that the biggest game in Ireland’s sporting history since 2002 was taking place.

So I was condemned to buying a latte and trying to follow the game on my Blackberry. Electronic devices are getting smaller and more sophisticated. But I seem to have a contraption that is based on a 1980’s 56k modem. It is slower than the Victorian postal system (I mean the 19th Century one and not the State I currently live in by the way, although locals tell me the 19th Century postal system was better) and presents internet data in eye boggling squashed format.

However, it did somewhat add to the tension of the occasion as every time I’d press update I’d have to wait five minutes for a response. I bit what’s left of my nails and rocked nervously in my chair to the bemusement of all the other customers who were normal Australians on their way to work, ignorant of the great events unfolding at the other side of the world.

In the end I had to go to the meeting and my opportunities to check out my blackberry were limited. At 9.30am, I snuck one last look and saw the disappointing result. At that stage however, I was oblivious to the media storm that was kicking off around the world which would become so fierce that by the weekend the Australian media was doing something unprecedented. Commenting on a football match that Australia wasn’t involved in.

I followed the game on RTE’s match-tracker and they included emails they were receiving from around the world. Jim was in Buenos Aires in an internet cafe. Patrick and Lisa were in Helsinki and couldn’t find a pub showing the game. Frank was doing the Inca Trail and amazed that he could pick up the RTE website on his Iphone. Barry was in a packed pub in Boston with about 500 other guys who had sneaked out of work early. I felt a small piece of pride as I read those messages. I was part of a Diaspora spread across the globe who felt enough connection to our home country to try our best to follow the game back home, whatever our time zone or circumstance.

It’s hard to measure how many of we overseas Irish watched the match, or spent anxious minute’s texting friends back home for updates. But I’m guessing lots did. For all our success in Rugby and passion for our native games, nothing excites the Irish public more than soccer.

I brought this issue up with Yuri my barber on Saturday. He’s from the Ukraine and they had their own pain last week. But he was pretty sanguine about that. He was more interested in our dilemma. “You should invade” he said. “Those French normally surrender after two or three days. You do what the Germans did to the Austrians in 1938. Take their best players, change the country’s name to Ireland and take their place in the World Cup”.

We had a bit of a laugh about that. But actually I don’t want to do anything about it. It’s sickening, frustrating and depressing. But its football and we should just leave it at that. I don’t agree with video replays, retrospective reviews or even extra referees. For the beauty of football is in the great injustice of these moments. Why is it the sport most talked about in pubs? Why do friends not argue passionately about Golf or Tennis? Why are the Germans still talking about whether a ball was over the line 43 years ago? Why are the English still moaning about their own “Hand of God” in 1986?

The fact is that the best team doesn’t always win. Players cheat, referees make mistakes or show deliberate bias and Administrators fix things so that big teams prosper. As a result, France are in the World Cup and Manchester United win more Championships than they should. Putting up with this sort of injustice makes the good times when they come feel all the sweeter.

If it happens all the time, you have to wonder why this incident made such a furore. Is it because Thierry Henry was previously considered to be the most honourable footballer around? Was it because France was the big team and we were humble minnows? Or was it because we actually outplayed the French in a way nobody expected and this took so many people by surprise, including it must be said, most Irish fans.

As it is, we will just have to dine out for the next 20 years on the pain and hope that in that Oliver Stone movie, there is a more favourable alternative ending.

Thursday 19 November 2009

A Walk in the Woods

I used to belong to a group that could best be described as a drinking club with a small hill walking problem. We never got around to writing a constitution for our little company, but if we did, the first rule would certainly be “that all walks must terminate at a pub that offers overnight accommodation or public transport back to the City.”

We would generally leave Dublin early on Saturday mornings and head south towards Wicklow where the hills are sleepy and bathed in heather. We would then tramp for 15km or so in usually toxic weather, warmed only by the prospect of a bowl of Chowder and a pint of Guinness at the end of our ordeal.

Walking in Australia is a different stroll in the park. Everything is bigger here, from Chicken schnitzels to station wagons and walks are no exception. Once you get out of the city, you could walk for 15km and still be in the same field that you started in. To get from one logical starting point to another requires a walk of much greater distance and alas, there is rarely a pub at the end of it.

We’ve been toying with the Great Ocean Walk for the past six months. This runs parallel to the famous Great Ocean Road and hugs the coastline, offering a view of places rarely seen by tourists. We’ve had a few scary moments on these walks, not least getting trapped by the incoming tide and having to scramble unceremoniously through thick bush to get back to something resembling civilisation.

But nothing we’ve done there compares to the walk we did last weekend. We headed down to Wilson’s Prom on Thursday night after work and rested up before our big adventure. The prom sits as an odd shaped peninsula hanging off the south of Australia, like the testicles of a bull in heat. Its tip represents the most Southern point in Australia and next to this stands a lighthouse as remote as any beacon on earth.

Our plan was to stay at the lighthouse, which meant a 32km walk in and an 18km walk out. The route in follows the coastline along the sort of twisting, hilly paths that would trouble a wild goat. We set off at 8.45am, full of enthusiasm and pancakes and knocked off the first 10km in jig time. This was pretty much a downhill run to the first beach but it burdened us with false confidence. We climbed the hill at the end of the beach and had our first taste of the challenge the day would present. Hands fumbled in back packs to find water bottles which had worked their way to the bottom. Jackets were discarded and the straps on our three day packs were tightened. The early morning mist had fainted away with our confidence and the sun started its inexorable rise.

We reached the summit of the hill and the majesty of Refuge Bay lay out before us. A loan yacht bobbed on the azure coloured sea which gave the scene the air of a cast away island. When we reached the beach, we were ready for a swim and simply dropped our packs and dived in. Many Australians are reluctant to dip their toe into the ocean before the Christmas dinner has been consumed, but I have no such reservations. I’ve swam in the sea around Ireland for example, and compared to that the southern ocean is like a sauna.

After we had cooled ourselves sufficiently, we unwrapped the sandwiches that I had kindly prepared for the group. They were hurriedly consumed and followed up with some scroggin (a word I first heard in Australia and is so rare it’s hasn’t made its way to Dictionary.com yet).

We refilled our water bottles and set course for the next peak. This proved even tougher than the previous hill, partly because of the sandwiches swirling around our bellies. We finally made it across the top and down the other side towards Waterloo Beach. By now it was almost 6pm and we still had 10km to cover and although we didn’t say anything to each other, a sense of unease had settled on the group. None of us had any experience of walking through the bush at night and sundown happens pretty quickly here, so we knew that at least the last part of the walk would be done in darkness.

When night came, we found ourselves in the deepest part of the forest and it soon dawned on me that most wild animals in Australia are nocturnal. We slouched along nervously, piecing our way between the rocks and crevices by the dim glow of our torches. Every now and again a crashing sound would come from the deep bush around us and we would cower expecting a Kangaroo to come bounding across our path. At one stage, a large Wombat appeared and surveyed us nervously before sticking his head between two rocks and offering his large derriere to us in an act of defiance.

After two hours night walking that resembled Frodo’s journey in “Lord of The Rings” we finally sighted the lighthouse and thought we were home and dry. The walk however, had one more trick up its sleeve.

Like many lighthouses around the world, Wilson’s Prom sits atop an imposing cliff. We had made our way down to sea level and so the last 800 metres of our tramp was pretty much vertical. I’m reading Anthony Beever’s “D-Day” at the moment and he has a gripping chapter covering the attempts of the American Rangers to scale the cliff tops at Omaha Beach. All I can say is that our endeavour could not have been more difficult if we’d had a bunch of Germans firing at us from the top.

We finally made it and were embraced by our fellow walkers who had taken the easy way in but were in the process of sending out a search party.

We were too tired to consume any of the alcohol we had diligently carried in and we made our way to bed, to rest weary limbs and to try and banish the thought from our minds that the only way to get home was by helicopter or to walk back on Sunday. I dreamed of rotating blades and fell into a deep sleep.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

The Ghosts of Halloween Past

The Drunken Poet was busy on October 31st. Irish backpackers mixed amicably with the locals, who comprised longer term emigrants huddled over the best attempt that the Southern Hemisphere can make at a pint of Guinness.

Siobhan worked the counter like Peigin Mike in ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ with a “welcome kind stranger” for every new face that crossed her threshold. It was Halloween, but that wasn’t why the Irish had gathered. An all girl Dixie Band were knocking out the hits of Dolly Parton and that was keeping the attention of those who hadn’t come to sample Arthur’s finest.

The Irish Diaspora are big on their festivals and traditions. St Patrick’s Day gets celebrated with the drunken abandon of a sailor on shore leave and Christmas is often marked by sweating paddies cooking Turkey and Ham in tropical conditions.

Thankfully, Halloween is not something we emigrants are proud of. It is a largely Irish festival, derived from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, but like most good things in life, the Yanks have ruined it. To the rest of the world, it is now an American holiday, with oversized pumpkins and sugared up kids in superman outfits.

Australians seem to ignore it, partly because they are smart enough to see a Disney themed festival coming and also because the sun kind of gets in the way. Daylight savings arrived here in October, providing an extra hour of sunlight each evening just as the locals took the winter covers off their BBQs. The simple truth is, kids don’t look scary enough dressed as Dracula when the sun is blazing down.

It wasn’t like that when I was a nipper of course. The clocks in Ireland went back at that time of year with a ghostly suddenness, pitching the country into a seemingly endless winter. Halloween offered an eerie introduction to winter and with nothing else to do until Christmas, we embraced it with the abandon of death row prisoners.

My happiest memories from back then are from the days before I was let out of the house after dark. My mother would buy citrus fruit (as rare in Ireland in the 70’s as in Berlin in May 1945) and nuts that only seemed to be sold at that time of year. We’d crack our teeth on the plastic ring hidden in the Barnbrack and be half drowned by my older brother when playing ‘bob the apple’. He was adept at convincing you to dip your head into a bucket of water, before holding it down once it was in. Many years later my brother emulated this trick with a young lad called McNally and a regularly flushed toilet. My brother spent a lot of time in the Middle East in the early eighties and sometimes I wonder if he was there to teach the CIA how to ‘waterboard’ suspects. He was certainly a master of it at the age of ten.

My scary memories of Halloween (attempted drowning apart) came when I was old enough to wander the streets of town after dark in the company of other young renegades looking for cheap thrills. My problem was that I was desperate to be one of the gang, but had the toughness of Elton John. And I was afraid of fire and that’s what Halloween mostly involved.

Each street would compete to build the biggest bonfire, although how this was judged I never knew as nobody travelled outside their own street on bonfire night for fear of becoming fuel to the neighbour’s flames. Stories of small boys being hurled into infernos were widespread round our way and we stayed close to our lunatics as a result. For weeks beforehand, those lunatics would raid garages for old tyres, dismantle entire buildings just for the wood and gather anything that was combustible and not padlocked.

I always stood far enough back to avoid the exploding gas canisters and horizontally projected fireworks, but still went home smelling like a chimney sweep.

When I came back to Ireland as a responsible adult, I noticed that Halloween was in the early stages of being americanised. But we still maintained an element of the madness that had been a part of my childhood. The British celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th November. We Irish were never so keen on this festival, as a Catholic trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament was seen in Ireland as a sort of career ambition rather than cause to burn an effigy atop a bonfire.

However, the Brits love their fireworks at that time of year and that provides a ready supply to the Irish to celebrate Halloween five days previously. Fireworks are illegal in Ireland, but not in Northern Ireland. So enterprising businessmen set up warehouses along the border to tempt the would be pyrotechnic wizards from the South.

Alas, very few of these fireworks made it as far as Halloween, patience not being a virtue among the brain dead idiots who buy them. The first one would be let off around mid June, no doubt as a test missile and timed to coincide with that point when normal people like me are about to sink into peaceful sleep. From then until October, we would be treated to a nightly attack of random explosions notable more for their sound than colour, as Dublin became a benign version of Baghdad.

A last minute trip North would be planned on Halloween Eve, to replace the prematurely ejaculated stock. And that meant the night itself was an occasion for dogs and other easily frightened animals like me to don earmuffs and bury ourselves beneath duvets.

Many people ask me what I miss about Ireland and I have a well rehearsed list. Less often, I am asked what I don’t miss. After the weather and the obsession with property, I’d safely put Halloween third. Spend next years at the Drunken Poet and you won’t want to hear a cheap firework again.

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Working for the Yankee Dollar- Part 5

The fund managers, as is their want, turned up fashionably late. They sauntered through the door in a blur of cashmere and Italian leather and settled at the top of the table, unpacking their super trim laptops with the smugness of orchestra conductors. When it was their turn to speak, Alex, who was clearly the senior of the two by virtue of having yawned most during the previous discussions, rose languidly to speak. He carried the bored expression of a man who was being forced to tell everyone how brilliant he was when he expected that they already knew.

‘If I can refer you to slide one in your pack’, he droned while simultaneously pointing to a garish PowerPoint presentation he had just brought up on screen. ‘You'll see that the fund grew by 27% in the year under review, which was entirely in line with our predictions. Any questions?’ As none were forthcoming, he proceeded through slides two to nine which contained a colourful array of graphs and formulas.

Frank considered himself an intelligent chap but he didn't understand a word of it. But he was mindful of Eimear's earlier warning and kept quiet.

Geoffrey on the other hand hadn't spoken for while and was clearly worried that he might forget how. ‘Maybe you chaps could give us a brief oversight into your investment strategy. Lay man's terms, that sort of thing’.

Alex smiled at his colleague like the smart guy in class who was being asked to explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity. ‘Well our strategy is quite unique, we think. We buy stocks when they are going up in value and sell them when they are coming down’.

Eimear sat between Frank and Alex and Frank noticed that she seemed captivated by everything the flash fund manager was saying. She leaned forward and Alex’s gaze was drawn to her ample cleavage. Frank felt like a young buck deer being challenged by a multi-horned interloper and momentarily forgot his vow of silence.
‘Isn't that what everybody tries to do?’ Frank asked before catching a dark glare from Eimear. Alex hesitated, wondering if he would lower himself to answering a mere bean counter. ‘The science is in knowing when stocks are going to go up in value and when they are going to come down’.

Frank could feel the heat coming from Eimear but he didn't care. The non invitation to lunch and the patronising response of the smug git in the cashmere jacket was too much for him.

‘But you just borrow money from your parent company and lend it out to poor people at a higher interest rate. That's not a science. Credit Unions have been doing that for years but without charging the millions that you guys do’.

Geoffrey coughed, ‘In the interest of time, gentlemen, maybe we should move on’. He was concerned about making his lunch appointment but not nearly as much as he was about the fund from which they all made extortionate amounts being simplified in this manner.

‘The next item on the agenda is directors' fees. We agreed at our last meeting that Rupert here would be best suited to come up with a quote for next year. Rupert sits on the most boards and would have the broadest knowledge of the fees paid in the hedge fund industry’.

Rupert shuffled his papers and cleared his public school educated throat. ‘Well I can only speak for the boards I sit on. The fees range from ten grand to one hundred and twenty, depending on the complexity of the fund’.

‘And how would you see this fund in that range?’ Geoffrey asked, although his smile betrayed the fact that he already knew the answer.

Rupert played along with the charade for a moment before answering ‘Oh, somewhere in the middle. So I'd suggest that the fee should be about, hmm, seventy grand’.

Frank looked at Eimear and thought about how he'd be looking for a pay increase as soon as he got back. Seventy grand was more than he earned in a year and even by the extravagant standards of the business he worked in, it seemed a lot for turning up to four meetings.

The directors on the other hand were as pleased as punch with Rupert's suggestion. ‘That seems like a capital idea’. Geoffrey said. ‘I'll let the promoters know about our decision and we can implement from January 1. Now that seems as good a point as any to break for lunch’.

In the end, the discussion on the accounts was uneventful. The expensive wine at La Rochelle had clearly had a soporific effect and the board were happy to coast for the afternoon. As Frank finished his presentation, he looked at Eimear and caught her smiling at him. He knew his morning indiscretion had been forgiven and that his evening flirting prospects had improved.

The meeting was coming to an end. Expensive pens were carefully placed back in inside pockets, laptop power cables were folded and packed and Frank's stomach muscles relaxed for the first time in two days.

Geoffrey had just one more item to cover on the agenda. ‘The next board meeting is due in March. We had a chat over lunch and we think it would be a capital idea to have the meeting in Dublin. Rupert sits on a couple of boards that do that. Apparently it’s OK as long as you don't hold meetings on the mainland. We were thinking about Friday 24th if that fits into your diaries. Eimear, I presume we can hold the meeting in your office? And maybe afterwards you could take us to one of those wild Irish pubs?’

Eimear was just happy that the day was nearly over. ‘Of course Geoffrey, and if there is anything else we can do for you, then let us know’.

Geoffrey threw a conspiratorial look at Rupert and his tongue danced devilishly around his mouth. ‘Well there is the small matter of a rugger match at your Croke Park the next day. England are playing your lot and Rupert is able to swindle a couple of tickets out of his old school. But if you could get three more tickets for the directors then the board would be happy to put in a positive word for you with the promoter’.

Frank could only smile and wonder how they would explain this to their boss back in Dublin. The meeting broke up with hand shakes and lingering cheek kisses for Eimear. The fund managers departed as rudely as they had arrived. The directors were more polite but their golf game was imminent and soon Eimear and Frank found themselves alone with only shuffled board papers for company.

Eimear stood up and ran her hands slowly along the creases of her ruby red skirt. ‘Well that was a roller-coaster’. She said. ‘I could really do with a drink and to get out of these clothes’.

Frank didn't say anything. But he was enthusiastic about both suggestions.

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Why Kiwis take the credit for everything

Dan lived his life in arrears. One month in arrears to be precise. He realised that his credit card company gave him free credit if he paid his bill in full at the end of the month. So at some stage he went out and spent two months worth of income in one month and had Visa look after half of it.

The only problem with this strategy was that as soon as he cleared his bill each month he was stone broke and had to put everything on his credit card again. He was a kind of a proto-type for what the Celtic Tiger was later to become. But when I met him back in 1996, we thought of him simply as a reckless idiot.

That wouldn’t have mattered except I tended to find myself behind him in the lunch queue each day and would watch my Lasagne grow cold as he waited on the barman to process his three pounds fifty payment. Back then, they used the manual carbon paper swipe contraption that never seemed to work first time and required dexterity and nimble fingers not often found in the bar industry.

Dan’s crowning achievement was to purchase a Cadbury’s Crème egg on credit one lunchtime which cost the princely sum of nineteen pence. I had the misfortune to stand behind him in the queue that day too.

I work for the bank that invented the credit card and still makes the majority of its profits in these fiscally challenged times from the poor credit management of card holders. And yet, I will publically state that I hate the things. History has not been kind to me I must admit. I applied for my first Visa card as a fresh faced twenty two year old, fresh off the immigrant boat to England and determined to make my way in the bustling metropolis that was Thatcher’s Britain. My bank sent me a glossy brochure promising all sorts of benefits if I would deign to accept one of their flexible friends. I duly completed the application form and submitted it for approval.

Two weeks later, I received a rejection letter. Despite my high salary and dashing good looks, I didn’t meet their approval criteria. I was devastated, mainly because I didn’t even want the bloody thing in the first place and had only applied because they wrote to me. I saw it as a cunning English plot to humiliate a humble Irishman and I wasn’t going to stand for it. I called the bank and demanded to speak to the manager. As anyone who has tried to do this will know, banks go to extraordinary lengths to avoid letting you speak to their manager. But I was determined, not least because I was calling from work and was therefore using their phone and time. I held on for an hour before I was eventually put through.

“Hello, is that the Manager?” I asked with as much indignation as I could muster.
“Yes, Mr. Borrow here, how can I help you?”

I was momentarily taken aback. “You’re a bank manager called Mr. Borrow?”

“Yes, it gets a few chuckles alright” he said. “You might say I had a calling to this profession. It was either that or become a librarian.”

I laughed and my indignation was lost. I found it hard to muster the fury of my original assault and meekly accepted his offer to ‘look into things’.

Not long after my conversation with Mr Borrow, I received a shiny little card in the post and was welcomed with open arms to the world of personal debt and consumerism. I have to admit that I found the card useful at times, especially in Luxembourg where they would let you buy beer at service stations on your company credit card and mark it up as petrol.

The advent of the Internet led me into a whole new world of spending, as it allowed me to buy things without the hazard of dealing with obnoxious sales people. On the internet, you buy things on your own time (actually in most cases you buy things on your employer’s time, but the less said about this the better). It’s a different matter when you are racing for the tram and anxious to buy a ticket in 7-eleven and some gobshite is buying the paper on his credit card and struggling to remember his Pin number.

New Zealand has a lot to answer for in this respect. I arrived there for the first time in December 1995 and was brought out for a beer by my gracious host on a quiet midweek night in Auckland. There were only two of us in the pub and three staff, but it still took us ten minutes to get served. Tony my host had ordered two bottles of DB bitter that came to the princely sum of 4 of those funny kiwi dollars. He then handed over a battered card that looked like it had been through a few washing machine cycles. I later learned that this was an “EFTPOS” card, a devise that New Zealanders seem bizarrely proud of. It is basically a debit card that has proved so successful that kiwis no longer carry cash, except to buy drugs and pay for hookers, although I’m led to believe that the major players in both these businesses are happy to accept plastic.

Tony spent a few minutes scraping his card along the machine slit without success. He withdrew the card, blew on it, cleaned it against his shirt and retried. After further failure, the barman muttered a phrase normally reserved for the end of relationships. “It’s not you, it’s me”. He proceeded to blow into his machine (a large exhalation of human breath seems to be the preferred repair protocol for EFTPOS related problems) and to bang it aggressively against the bar.

Eventually I stepped forward with a fresh five dollar note and the transaction was closed in seconds.

So I’d like to make a suggestion that might annoy my bosses. Ban card transactions of less than $100 if somebody is standing behind you in a queue. It will speed things up and increase trade. And that my friends, is the only suggestion I’ll give to help Capitalism work its way out of the mess it finds itself in.

Saturday 10 October 2009

Working for the Yankee Dollar- Part 4

The flight into Guernsey was delayed and Frank felt his stomach lurch as the plane made its bumpy approach. This was his first business trip abroad and the last thing he needed was to be late. Eimear and himself were coming from Dublin to a board meeting where they would be the only Irish people present and despite the Celtic Tiger years, Frank still felt enough cultural inferiority to want to avoid turning up late to a meeting with upper class English people.

In the event they were early and had twenty minutes to discuss strategy and to nibble on the chocolate biscuits that had been laid out for the Directors.

Eimear had a few ground rules to set down. ‘Don’t speak unless you are asked something by name. And for God’s sake, don’t question anything that somebody else says. We’re humble service providers and we’re here to deliver the accounts and to get out of dodge without being embarrassed’.

‘I prepared those accounts’; Frank said with as much emotional outrage as Accountants can muster in these situations. ‘And I can stand over every number in them’.

‘It’s not the numbers I’m worried about. These old duffers never look at the numbers. They earn their outrageous fees for spotting that the font on page seventeen doesn’t match the font in the table on page six, or that you have spelt ‘it’s’ with an inappropriate apostrophe. My favorite was last year when they questioned the directors’ fees in the profit and loss account. Geoffrey, the Chairman, gathered all the indignation of the cavalry officer he had previously been.


“Me and the chaps had a quick chat over dinner last night and I’m afraid to say that last year we weren’t paid nearly that much”.

I tried to explain the accruals concept to them and how the sum in the accounts was made up of what they were paid plus what they were owed. But their eyes just glazed over. These guys are supposed to be providing oversight to a four billion pound Hedge Fund and all they care about are their poxy fees’.

Outside, the moneyed life of Guernsey was waking up. Yachts bobbled in St Peter Port and a trail of bustling pin stripe suits were making their way into the various off-shore branches of British banks.

‘Nice view, isn’t it?’ Eimear said. ‘I can think of worse places to have a board meeting. It reeks of money here, so it’s a good place to talk about it’.
‘Sure’, said Frank. ‘But why are we here? This is a fund managed in London, registered in the Cayman Islands and the book-keeping is done by us in Dublin. So why is the board made up of five old guys from the Channel Islands?’

‘It’s all about tax, Frank. These people like to pretend that they’re selling sophisticated investment products but really they’re just a cheap little tax avoidance scheme. This is a British operation, but they can’t have board meetings there or the UK Tax authorities will say that it is an on-shore fund and tax the hell out of it’.

‘But aren’t the Channel Islands part of the UK?’ Frank asked.

‘Only when it suits them’. Eimear replied. ‘It’s like abortion in Ireland. We like to think that we are as pure as the driven snow by not having it. But we turn a blind eye to all the girls sneaking over to England to have it done there. Well the British are like that about tax. Holier than thou when it comes to clamping down on the little guy claiming a few dodgy expenses against his tax bill but at the same time they ignore every millionaire hiding his ill-gotten gains in so called ‘off-shore’ funds.

Frank had tuned out on the mention of abortion. He had spent the trip over sneaking glances at his boss and he didn’t want the erotic thoughts running through his head to be interrupted by talk of terminations. They were staying overnight in Guernsey and Eimear had mentioned a pub that she had been in the year before. Frank wondered if she was dropping hints. A few gin and tonics and a chance to get to know her new good looking staff member. That’s how he liked to see it anyway.

He was ambitious and having a fling with his boss seemed as good a way as any to get ahead. And Eimear was a looker to boot. Particularly today, when she had put on her best power suit for the benefit of the guys on the board. Frank had noticed that suit before. It always seemed to come out when she had a meeting with older men. Deep red with a knee line that was just the right side of decency, it screamed business mixed with pleasure. Eimear was a modern business woman who had smashed through several glass ceilings on her way up. But she didn’t seem to be averse to using sexual attraction when it suited her.

‘You must be the Paddies’, a voice boomed from behind. Frank reeled to find a shovel shaped hand being thrust towards him. ‘Geoffrey Olmer Swanston. I’m the chairman of the board of this little beast. And you must be the chap who has been filling my inbox all week with these blasted accounts’.

Frank was about to answer yes, but the ex cavalry officer had already spotted a more favorable battlefield.

‘Ah, the lovely Eimear. Great to see you again. Hopefully we can get you out for a drink this time. Did you have a pleasant trip over?’

However, it was clear that the chairman didn’t just like the sound of his own voice; he wasn’t interested in hearing the sound of any others. For not even the lovely Eimear was able to get a word in before Geoffrey was bounding over to the door to greet the other directors.

‘Come in gentlemen, we’ve a busy agenda to get through today. We’ll cover the first part this morning and then adjourn for lunch. Debbie has booked the five of us and the two chaps from the fund manager’s office into La Rochelle for 1pm. So keep that in mind if you’re thinking of asking any long winded questions this morning. We’ll wrap up this afternoon with a view to finishing early. Rupert and I have a foursome to get to for 4pm’.

Frank felt a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance. He noticed that the accounts were scheduled for discussion in the afternoon session which meant that they could have gotten a later flight and not had to get up at 3am to catch the red eye. He also realised that Eimear and himself were the only people at the meeting who were not invited to lunch. His cultural inferiority went into overdrive.


It was going to be a long day, so best to just sit back and enjoy the view.

To be continued……

Monday 28 September 2009

Coffee and a Muffin to go

It’s 9am and I’m feeling a little tired, which is not a great place to be when you haven’t started work yet. Thankfully coffee seems to have been invented for this sort of thing. However,. I’m a traditional Irishman, reared on eight cups of strong tea a day. So coffee is an alien concoction to me, as foreign as Tiramisu and Falafel. I was sixteen years old before I tasted a cup of Brazil’s finest. My brother, who liked to think of himself as a debonair peacock among the dull grey pigeons of 1980’s Ireland, had purchased a jar of Maxwell House (which I later discovered is the Old Spice of the coffee world) and laid down an instruction to my poor beleaguered Mother that she was to deliver a cup of the said product with a dash of milk and two spoons of sugar to him each morning.

My Mother, as was her way, told him to take a very long walk off a very short pier and so the jar stayed in our cupboard for eternity, alongside the other unused products such as curry powder and soda stream concentrate.

I came in late one night from my high paying job collecting glasses in the local pub and decided to test out the strange elixir in the cupboard. All my TV heroes, for example, were coffee drinkers and even the posh kids at school would come in with stories about whipped cream extravagances that went on in their big houses on the hill. The result was the worst thing I had tasted since I mistook our Dog’s abolitions for a Mars Bar when I was four. Then I remembered that I’d had the same reaction when I first drank beer and that perseverance paid off in that regard.

So I have been an occasional coffee drinker ever since, although I still struggle to tell the difference between a flat white and a skinny latte (except that the latte is clearly made with milk extracted from skinny cows) and the much maligned Maxwell House tastes the same to me as freshly ground premium blend.

Melbourne thinks it has the best coffee in the world so it would be remiss of me not to try it out. I’ve started cycling to work a few days each week and when I do so; I reward myself with a latte and muffin from the little cafe at the base of our building. Li works the coffee machine there like a steam locomotive driver in the19th Century and knows me by name now which suggests that I eat a lot more muffins than I’d care to admit.

She has taken to leaving a little slice of cake on the lid of my cup, which I’ve noticed she only does for special customers and people who by their shape suggest that they really, really like cake. I’m not sure which category I fall into but I like to think that I’m in the special customer club. Some shops do loyalty cards. This one does little cakes and I know which I prefer.

My muffin choice is dependent on my healthy food intake for that week. I like to comply with Victorian State Government recommendations and consume 5 portions of fruit and veg each day. If I’m struggling, I supplement my diet with an apple or blueberry muffin. If I’ve done well, by perhaps consuming some pear cider or strawberry ice-cream, I’ll reward myself with a chocolate muffin, safe in the knowledge that I have dodged the food police for another week.

When I leave Li’s café, I have a choice of turning left or right. The distance back to my desk is the same both ways, but the right hand side is busier and you are more likely to bump into someone than if you turn left.

Normally at this point, both hands are busy with carrying duties, so I nibble the small slice of cake on the top of the cup like an oversized mouse. It’s not a sight I am keen to share with the general public, so I normally take the quiet route.

This morning however, I was a little sleepy and turned right without thinking. I had hardly walked two meters before I was stopped by a recruitment consultant of limited acquaintance. During the boom years, these people were matched only by Estate Agents and Bank Executives in the ease with which they made money. Now they sweep the streets where broken dreams are thrown. It’s humbling to watch them working for a living for a change. But I work in a bank, so perhaps I shouldn’t throw stones.
Their sales technique is overwhelming however. They want to be your best friend, which is an uncomfortable feeling for us accountants, who take years to trust somebody enough to look up from our shoes. She spent ten minutes telling me how well I looked, how business was booming and how she had a fantastic candidate that she was saving just for me.

The cup was slowly burning into the palm of my hand to the point where I felt that skin was about to come off. So I mumbled my excuses and left. As I ascended in the lift I thought about all those options we are faced with in life. All those figurative forks in yellow woods that we come across. How different would our lives be now if we’d turned right out of the disco toilets back in 1985 and not left? Turning left meant bumping into that girl who ended up breaking your heart, who made you leave town and move abroad where you ended up winning the local lottery and being hit by a bus as you crossed the road to collect the cheque.

Life is all about choices. As a Woody Allen character once said “We define ourselves by the choices we have made”. But I don’t think there is any point getting caught up in it. That’s just the way life is. But I will give you some advice. Always choose the busier path; there are more interesting things to be found there. But choose the quieter path if you want your coffee to be warm when you get back to your desk.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Thursday Morning Coming Down

To paraphrase Johnny Cash, "I woke up Thursday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt". Drinking on school nights is a practice that should be restricted to students and the unemployed. They have the energy to keep going and the opportunity to sleep in the next day. Bankers of a certain age have no such advantage and I'm paying the sorry price for that now. Twenty four hours ago, the beer was flowing and the craic was mighty. I gave no thought to getting up for work the next day and neither did my drinking buddies. We were just intent on proving that the Global Financial Crisis wasn't going to stop us from partying.

We were entertaining a visitor from Singapore and trying to prove that Melbourne has a midweek nightlife. In practice, that proved tougher than finding a bacon buttie in Tel Aviv on Yon Kippur.

But there were ten of us and that tends to create its own dynamic. All boys are competitive, except at different things. Some like to show their alpha maleness by reaching the pinnacle of their profession. Others prove themselves through sport or by hooking up with supermodels. God decided that my killer instinct is invoked whenever I’m drinking beer in company.

People who know me are aware that I like a beer. In fact some have commented that I am one of the few people in life who consider beer more important than oxygen and one ex girlfriend cruelly described me as a not particularly complicated biological machine for turning beer into urine. It may come as a shock to these people that I can happily go weeks without touching the amber nectar. But put me in a situation where other men are drinking and I turn into Michael Schumacher. I can’t help myself; I have to drink faster and longer than anyone else in a desperate attempt to prove my manliness.

That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I didn’t get hammered on Wednesday night because I’m immature and reckless. My DNA made me do it.

I have my alarm set up to turn on the radio each morning and I'm usually met by the soothing tones of Red Symons on ABC, who jokes his way through the news and eases listeners into the day. As luck would have it, when the alarm kicked off this morning, Red had moved to a story about the Italian Film festival and I was woken to the sounds of machine gun fire and piercing screams.

I groped manically for the snooze button and desperately tried to get a grip on reality. My mouth was as dry as a Quaker’s wake and my tongue felt like it had been ripped out in the middle of the night and replaced with one that didn’t quite fit.
The act of showering and dressing took longer than normal and I knew something was really up when I sat down for my daily bowl of cornflakes and found that I was eating them individually.

It was 9am before I was ready to meet the day and I stumbled down the road to the tram stop. The 96 tram goes through a metamorphosis at 9am. Before that point, it is full of sleepy commuters heading into their office jobs in the City. It’s usually packed and dominated by Ipod wearing, Aravind Adiga readers.

They are safely tucked up at their desks by 9am and at that point the tram is taken over by a bohemian mix that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Trainspotting. The first to board are the tramps who sleep rough around Acland Street and have just been rudely woken by shopkeepers who take exception to them kipping in their doorways. A comfortable seat on the tram is clearly the best way they can find to ease themselves into the day. Unfortunately, they have a fairly random acquaintance with hygiene and trams are a pretty enclosed space. So my liberal sympathies are very quickly overtaken by a need to protect the volatile contents of my stomach.

So I make my way to the front of the tram and bury myself in a book. Two stops later and we’re on Fitzroy Street, home to fast food restaurants and hostels that cater for drug addicts and the generally bewildered. The wind was strong and several emaciated figures were huddled in the small shelter. That was exactly where the front door of the tram stopped and pretty quickly I was surrounded by six twitching junkies with dark sunken eyes hidden behind sunglasses and skin like old boot leather.

I was feeling pretty judgmental, particularly as none of them bothered to buy a ticket. I’m guessing that they were on their way to the City to engage in financial transactions involving illegal drugs and shop lifting. Strange how you become a right wing scare monger when you have a hangover!

The only other passengers on the tram were a motley crew who had boarded at St Kilda Junction. They were dressed in similar fashion to the junkies but looked healthy and out of place in their clothes. I had seen groups like this before but in my hungover state, it took me a few moments to place them. They were plain clothes ticket inspectors sent in swarms to catch the 90% of passengers who don’t buy a ticket. The tramps and junkies had beaten me to it however. In the few seconds it took my addled brain to work all this out, they had jumped off the tram like ghostly pirates and disappeared into the nearby park.

I flashed my ticket at the inspectors and huddled more tightly in the seat. The click clackety click of the metal wheels rebounded in my head as though somebody was smacking my eyeballs with a hammer from the inside. A smell of stale body odour and year old chewing gum hung round the tram and attacked my senses with every intake of breath. I got off three stops early to breathe in some air and to find a café selling oversized sausage rolls.

Johnny Cash had the right idea. If you’re going to wake up feeling like this, it’s best to do it on a Sunday morning when you can crawl back into bed and at least be comfortable when you lie to yourself about how you are never, ever, ever drinking again.

Thursday 3 September 2009

The Written Test

It’s 8.30am on a Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the plaza ballroom of the Brisbane Exhibition Centre. And I’m bored. They took our mobile phones and IPods from us at reception and the test I’m here for doesn’t start until 9am. So I’m alone with my thoughts and about 300 Chinese and Indian people. Like me, they are here to sit a written English exam for residency purposes and to judge by their expressions they are equally at a loss to know what to do without electronic gadgets.

It wasn’t like that when I last sat an exam, which was back in the long hot summer of 1987. That was held in the Industrial Hall of the Royal Dublin Society which was like an oven on the day I sat my Financial Accounting test. At 1pm that day, I finished eighteen years of education and did what any Irishman would do in that situation. I went to the pub. This wasn’t necessarily a good idea. The exams came at the end of six weeks study leave during which time, I had hardly eaten, slept or washed. So after two pints in the Horseshoe Inn in Ballsbridge, I was floating on air. Ten hours and many pints later, I stumbled into Wanderers Rugby Club which held a disco on Friday nights, for the purposes of introducing nurses to young trainee accountants like me.

Unfortunately, on that Friday night, I was in more need of medical care from those nurses than loving. Somewhere around midnight, I stumbled into the toilets for a quick evacuation of my stomach and somehow managed to lose my glasses. Luckily, through the benefit of alcohol, I didn’t notice I was blind until the middle of the following day. I have only one other memory of that weekend. On the Saturday night, I went to see Elton John in an outdoor concert and couldn’t see a thing. Which was quite an achievement considering the clothes he was wearing.

I’m all grown up now of course and as I sat waiting for the exam to start in Brisbane, all I was dreaming of was a nice latte at the end of the test. I glanced around the hall and marvelled at the geographic spread of the students. For some reason it brought me back to a geography exam I sat in school. I sat beside a particular idiot who stared mournfully at his paper for an hour before nudging me.

“Why did Copenhagen become the biggest City in Denmark?” he asked. I was deep in contemplation at the time on the weightier matter of South American weather systems but I felt sorry for the poor guy as he looked like he lacked the geographical knowledge to find the toilet during the break.

“Because it’s a Port” I said, feeling that this was a suitable titbit to offer and would shut him up.

He gave me a conspirator’s wink and wrote in barely legible type, “Because it’s imported”.
I felt a mixture of annoyance and guilt, so I leant across and repeated my instruction. He nodded and put a line through his first attempt before writing “Because it’s exported”.

I sighed and decided to leave him to his ignorance. He’s probably an economic advisor to one of the Irish Banks now.

Finally the Brisbane test was about to start. The question and answer booklets were handed out but a rather angry English woman stood at the top of the hall and warned us under pain of death that we weren’t allowed to turn the papers over until she said so. She was paranoid about cheating and seemed to be under the impression that students had hidden answers in the toilet cisterns because she issued a severe warning that after the exam started anyone feeling a call of nature would have to cross their legs for three hours.

She spent the next ten minutes explaining how to complete the personal information section at the front of the answer sheet. One of the questions was “Male or female” which left her slightly flummoxed. Her headmistress persona was temporarily dented as she searched for the correct instruction. In the end she said “You can choose either one”. Everyone in the room laughed which was enough proof for me that they understood English and we should have just packed up and gone for a coffee. But it just made her angrier. She slammed her hand on the lectern and stared menacingly. I don’t know about the Chinese and Indians, but I was reminded of a particularly nasty Mother Superior and had the good sense to shut up and get back to my paper.

The exam itself was tougher than I expected. Having to write with a pen was a challenge. We have become so used to typing and texting that very few of us use pens any more apart from completing Sudoku puzzles. Spell check has also made me lazy and I found myself not using particular words because I lacked the confidence to spell them.

The first part of the test was about listening, a subject that all my ex girlfriends would grade me as an F. You had to interpret what was being said and answer questions on the hoof. This meant doing two things at once, which being a man, presented problems. After that, we had an hour of comprehension, which is harder to spell than it is to sit. We finished by having to write an essay on the subject of “Success in later life is determined by your parents. Discuss”.

I could see the finishing post and let fly with gusto. Nature versus nurture got a mention before I felt the need to lighten things up a little. So I mentioned my mother and how she bought me my first pair of glasses. That allowed me to study and to land the big jobs that have taken me all over the world. Those glasses not sit somewhere within the sewage system of Wanderers Rugby Club in Dublin. But they did their job Mam. Thanks for that and for teaching me how to speak English in the first place.

Tuesday 25 August 2009

The Speaking Test

Australians have a habit of asking me to explain Irish history, so I’ve boiled it down to two sentences. For 6,000 years we were happy, built lots of monuments and spread Christianity to Europe. And then the English invaded.

But living over here has made me revaluate this. I knew something was up when I found myself instinctively supporting England in the Ashes series and searching the TV Guide to see when the History of Britain was on.

Last week I flew to Brisbane to sit a twenty minute English test, the craziness of which I’ll get to later. I had an hour to kill at the airport and found myself flicking through the $5 bin in the DVD store. I came across Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and was reminded of that scene where the People’s Front of Judea is discussing “what have the Romans ever done for us”. The thought struck me that if I asked the same question of myself with regard to the English; I’d probably end up with the similar results as the Judeans.

Apart from the roads, railways, canals, legal system, universities and soccer, what have the English ever done for us? Well, I’d add one thing to that list. Language. The English came to Ireland and forced their language upon us. And being the good natured people we are, we gave it back in a better condition than we received it. Thankfully, the perfidious Brits then went and invaded half the world and forced their language on the poor natives they found there. And that’s why we Irish can emigrate to lots of places and have our tongue tied mumblings understood.

I’m in the throes of applying for Permanent Residency in Australia, a task that would amuse Kafka but to me feels like a journey through the seven stages of hell. My migration agent, when she is not fleecing me, comes up with ever more bizarre reasons for delaying my application. Her latest wheeze is to send me for an English exam on the promise that it will speed things up.

They examining company offered me a place on their Brisbane test. The only problem is that Brisbane is a plane ride away and they don’t confirm places until five days before the exam. The other wheeze they have is to separate their test between a speaking one and a written one, hold these tests four days apart and not tell you the venues until the day before. To a pernickety planner like me, that was like asking NASA to plan a Mars mission over a bank holiday weekend.

As I left the office the night before the speaking test, someone asked me if I’d been practicing much. “Since the age of about 14 months” I snapped back. But maybe he had a point. I speak with an accent and have been told that I spend most of my time talking through my arse. I’m sure that is not what the good people at the language testing centre want to hear, given that they already had enough trouble trying to figure out ways of spending all the money I was giving them.

So I decided to bone up on the Queen’s English between then and the test. The only problem is that the modern digital age provides limited opportunity to converse with like minded people. I’d pre-booked a bus ticket on the web, so didn’t even speak to the driver when I caught a ride to the airport, checked in for the flight at one of those faceless terminals that litter airport concourses and promptly got on the plane and fell asleep. When I got to Brisbane I bought a train ticket into town from a machine and realised I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone all day.

On my way to the train, I noticed a traveller in some trouble and thought this was an opportunity to do a favour and engage in some useful conversation training. I asked if she needed help and she looked at me with a blank expression that sucked the confidence out of me. Maybe I am a mumbling wreck who struggles to be understood? Thankfully, it turned out that she was from South America and couldn’t speak English. I manfully gave her directions to the train in my broken Spanish (I might have been saying “Where is the toilet” but she headed in the right direction anyway).

So it came to pass that I sat down two hours later for my speaking exam having only spoken pigeon Spanish that day. Thankfully it didn’t matter. Someone once said that the English horde words like misers, while the Irish spend them like sailors. Once I started talking, the examiner couldn’t shut me up. I told tall tales, short stories and downright lies, but it filled the twenty minutes required and I had the bonus of making my inquisitor laugh occasionally, which is the ultimate goal of all Irish men who engage in conversation. At the end she thanked me for talking to her, which is just about the first time I’ve ever heard that line from a female.

I made my way back to the station through the muggy streets of Brisbane. They don’t do winter in this part of Australia and the City was full of Tee shirted tourists. As I waited at Central Station I noticed a bust of Sir Thomas Brisbane after whom the City is called. A notice below set out his illustrious career from battles under Wellington to Governorship of New South Wales and the establishment of teaching colleges. It struck me that this dead white man was one of the people who brought the language that I was now so keen to express to this country.

I suddenly respected the great opportunities I have been presented with, simply by having the English language as my native tongue. So let’s give a big hand to the English. I think they are great and every house should have one.

Preferably as a butler. They make great butlers.

Friday 21 August 2009

You know you're a Melbournian when....

I’ve been living in Melbourne for just over two years now. Last week while munching on a muffin at work, a thought suddenly struck me. I had clicked on “The Age” website before checking out the Irish Times. That was the first time I’d done that since getting here and I realised that I’d suddenly become a Melbournian. As luck would have it, the Age ran an article on the very same subject by their esteemed journalist, Catherine Deveny.

I’ve taken the liberty of copying her observations and including them in this week’s blog, with my own comments.

YOU know you're from Melbourne if …
- When diarising anything in September you first consult the footy fixture.
I've blocked out every weekend on the slim chance that Carlton make it to the final.

- You were shocked when you found out not all street directories are called Melway.
The name of the Melbourne Street directory that is so widely used that people quote their Melway's reference in the way the rest of the world quotes their phone numbers.

- You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound.
Suburbs in the less attractive parts of Melbourne, mainly in the West. I've only been out there once and I'm still checking my pockets.

- You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.
I celebrate the fact that for the first time in my life, I’m living under a labour government but I've got a VW Golf and have floated the idea of a cleaner as I seem to have gone through the first 43 years of my life assuming that toilets clean themselves.

- You'd rather sit next to Guy Rundle on a plane than Guy Pearce.
Guy Rundle is the best political journalist in The Age and I read him, Martin Flanagan and Catherine Deveny every weekend. I thought Guy Pearce died in a strange drug related incident last year, but maybe that was the other Perthinality, Heath Ledger.

- You or someone you know has received a grant.
Lots of them, not to mention the Rudd handouts. I think my favourite was the girl receiving a PhD in March 2008, who had received a substantial grant from Melbourne University to research "The Portrayal of Lesbians in the Victorian Film Industry".

- You refer to rococo furniture as "very Franco Cozzo".
When I was furnishing my apartment, somebody mentioned Franco Cozzo. They said he was an Italian version of IKEA. When I went to see his shop in Brunswick, I realised this would be like comparing the guy who sang "Shut uppa your face" to Abba.

- You felt betrayed when you discovered Melbourne was not the only place in the world with trams.
I felt betrayed when I found out that Melbourne wasn’t even the only place in Australia to have them.

- You think the slogan on our licence plates should be "Melbourne. The Coffee Is Shit Anywhere Else", "Melbourne. Go To Sydney. We Hate Tourists" or “Melbourne What School Did You Go To?"
I think it should be “We’re a well balanced people; we have a chip on both shoulders”.

- You think the only person who looks good with a moustache is Ron Barassi.
Ron is a Carlton hero. I won’t have a bad word said about him. Moustaches are for men with porn film ambitions.

- You've looked out the window of Puffing Billy and waved like an idiot at the cars at the railway crossing. And you've watched Puffing Billy pass as you sat in a car at the railway crossing, and waved like an idiot.
Puffing Billy is an old steam train and I’ve only seen it from the saddle of my bike while climbing a steep hill. And yes, I nearly fell off while waving like an idiot.

- You think beyondblue does great work but you hate the way it makes Jeff Kennett look good. Which is depressing.
Jeff Kennett is the last conservative Premier of Victoria and now runs beyondblue, a charity aimed at people with depression. Which from my experience is anyone who has lived under a conservative government.

- You've been to the Royal Melbourne Show and the scariest ride is the train home.
Melbournians like getting dressed up, as though they are going to a wedding, head out to a large field at the edge of town for a Horse race or the Royal Melbourne Show and get trashed. I’ve had great fun sitting in Young and Jacksons bar and watching them pile out of Flinders Streetstation on the way home.

- When you hear the word ''Bougainville'' you think of Northland.
Bogans are to Australia as skangers are to Ireland and chavs are to the English. Northland is a strange shopping centre in a part of the city where Alsatians go around in pairs.

- You don't judge people on their looks, wealth or status but on the bread they buy, the coffee they serve and the newspaper they read.
I read “The Age”. If I see somebody reading “The Herald Sun”, I assume they are a little further down the evolutionary tree from the rest of us. Like at root level.

- You pretend the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry doesn't exist. Which it doesn't. Because Sydney doesn't care. And that really shits you.
Having a sister that lives in Sydney doesn’t help. But I say this without bias. Melbourne has better weather, cafes, culture and sport than Sydney. And we had the Olympics first.

- If a friend gets a new boyfriend or girlfriend, your first question is, ''Who do they barrack for?''
To put this statement in context, I arrived in Melbourne on a Friday evening back in July 2007 and checked into a hotel. The receptionist asked me “Who do you barrack for” and I’ve probably been asked this question more often than I’ve been asked my name. Barrack is the Australian word for “support” by the way, which is why we’re all so fond of Obama.

- Cup Day. Gambling at 9am. Drunk by noon. Broke at 3.20pm. Asleep by 4pm. Hungover at 5pm. All while at work.
The Melbourne Cup. The only day of the year when Australians drink more than Irish backpackers.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

The Red Pepper Cafe

10pm in the Red Pepper Café and the crowd and aroma would remind you of an Indian bazaar. Almost every taxi driver in Melbourne comes from the sub continent and it’s clearly shift changeover time because they all seem to be here.

They say that if you want to try the best ethnic food, go to where that ethnic community eats. That doesn’t always work of course. We Westerners have a sanitised palate and turn our cultured noses up at the idea of eating monkey’s brains or deep fried dog.

But with Indian food, it’s safe to go with the food the locals eat, particularly as they tip a nod to our delicate tastes and have Tikka Masala on the menu. A dish invented in Birmingham so that English drunks could eat something exotic on the way home from the pub.

I ordered butter chicken with rice and naan bread (for the princely sum of 9 dollars, or 5 euros in old money) and turned to search the room for a table. It wasn’t promising. All the small tables were taken by taxi drivers - talking earnestly of road blocks and fare evaders - and students huddled over accountancy and software manuals. The larger tables were taken by families dressed in colourful saris and tight fitting turbans. Entire generations were represented there, from grannies with massive glasses to jet black haired kids in summer dresses. The kids tended to catch my eye as I searched the room. I was the only white person in the place after all and when I was a kid I would have stared at any Indian who would venture into the local pub on a Sunday afternoon.

I began to think that I’d be eating my curry on the hoof when a voice beckoned me. Ravi was dining alone and saw my dilemma. I sat down beside him and asked how his meal was. He nodded and smiled which I took to be positive.

“The lamb here is fantastic, almost as good as back home”, he said.

“And where is back home”? I asked, as he scooped up some sauce with his naan bread in an action that made my feeble attempts look like a two year old eating spaghetti.

“Mumbai, although you guys probably call it Bombay. I came here two years ago to go to college.”

“What are you studying?” I asked. “How to get to the airport if the customer doesn’t want to pay the toll and that kind of thing”. He answered.

He saw my confusion and laughed. “Most of the taxi drivers here come to study, but then they realise they can’t afford the rent and school fees, so they drive taxis to make some cash. And before you know where you are, you’re driving fifty hours a week and have no time to study.”

Ravi had stopped laughing and looked sad, as though telling this small portion of his life story had suddenly reminded him of the futility of it.

“So, what are your plans?” I asked. “I guess you don’t want to drive a taxi forever.”

“Not in this shit hole anyway,” he said. “I’ll try and save some money and go back to Mumbai and get a job, maybe in a call centre or something like that. I can’t wait to get out of here. They treat us like crap, man”.

I shuffled uncomfortably in my do gooder shoes. Ravi wanted to get it off his chest however, and a white person in a restaurant aimed at locals seemed as good a place as any to start.

“You see what they are doing on the trains? They target Indian students because they think we are meek and won’t fight back. But we beat the bloody English empire so the Aussies better watch out”.

“You beat the Empire by getting a skinny man in an oversized nappy to lie in the middle of the road. I’m not sure that would work with Australians”.

I wasn’t sure if Ravi got the joke, but at that point my food arrived and it broke the awkward moment. “Butter Chicken is a good choice”, he said. “But I prefer it on the bone. You Westerners are too soft. You want your mothers to cut up your food for you”.

Ravi smiled. Having teased each other about our respective cultures, we were ok to resume normal conversation.

“Driving a taxi after midnight in Melbourne is the worst job in the world, man. Every punter thinks you are trying to rip him off. Taking the long way home or adding phantom tolls to his bill. Then you get the ones who think you can’t speak English and talk to their friends on mobile phones about how they are in a cab with a smelly driver. And they are the normal ones. They ones who try to rob you with syringes are worse”.

“You think driving a taxi in Mumbai would be any better?” I asked.

“We have a saying in India.” Ravi replied. “Everyone can stand to have their own pigs in the house. The passengers in Mumbai might be arseholes, but they are my people. Over here it’s just strangers acting like dick heads in my car every night.”

I struggled to find some consoling words, but there isn’t much you can say to a man who has discovered that Western Capitalism is a lie. The pubs were closed and Ravi had plenty of miles to go before he could sleep. He offered his hand and I rubbed the grease from mine before grasping it.

“If you wait five minutes, I can offer you a fare to St Kilda.” I said. “With no syringes or racial jokes.”

“St Kilda at this time of night! You must be joking”. He replied. “I can get a few fares up and down to King Street and make twice as much.”

He pulled on his navy blue jacket and left me to my curry. I hope he gets what he’s looking for in life and that he learns that not all Westerners fit a stereotype, even if he did prove to me that all taxi drivers are the same.

Thursday 6 August 2009

A Night at the Theatre

“Do you fancy being in a play?” Debra said. “We’re looking for a young handsome man to play the love interest in a production we’re putting on before Christmas. My ego was suitably stroked and I agreed readily, ignoring the fact that my only previous stage experience was playing a sleeping baby Jesus in a shivering nativity play.

Two days later, I found myself in a draughty library in suburban Luxembourg with a bunch of seconded Irish civil servants. I nodded my hellos and shyly slunk into a seat at the back. As a novice in the world of theatre I wasn’t clear how to act (if you’ll excuse the pun). Should I come over all luvvie, hugging everyone and air kissing like a Hollywood Princess? Or should I brood moodily like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western?

In the end, I opted for the look which would serve me so well in my later acting life. I sat looking gormless.

It quickly became clear that I had been oversold in relation to my part. I ended up playing an idiot farmer whose only love interest was with his sheep. The play itself was terrifying, particularly when our alcoholic lead turned up drunk for the last performance and proceeded to fall asleep on stage. By that point we had been through two light failures and a partial collapse of the scenery. So I assumed that all plays were ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ experiences and was sold on the adrenalin buzz.

Shortly afterwards I moved to Ireland and after ‘resting’ for a year or so I found out about a local drama group and made a tentative phone call. As with all these things, I reckon your first encounter is key. I was lucky enough to bump into a tousled haired chap with a curious English accent. His name was Charles and he seemed to have an ill-defined role in the drama group centred on making new members welcome and finding any excuse to go for a Guinness. I was happy to oblige him in both endeavours. Before we could get to the beer however I had to show that I was a willing participant in the group’s activities. I had turned up on the opening night of their Spring Play and was duly handed a bunch of programmes and told to man one of the entry doors.

By the time the play started I had accumulated seven pounds in programme sales and it’s a testimony to the faith of that Methodist group that they would trust a strange Catholic like me with the cash box. Particularly as I arrived with a meek but slightly threatening Northern accent that jarred in the company of so many soft spoken South Dublin vowels.

In the pub afterwards Charles let me into the secret of his burgeoning writing career. He had dabbled with that monstrosity of theatre known as musicals but was now ready to get into proper drama. His first play was a comedy set in the West of Ireland during World War II. I got to play a terrorist, for the second time in the four plays I’d done to that point. I was beginning to see a trend.

I would go on to play a number of roles which were either sinister baddy or general idiot. It culminated in my portrayal of Seanie Keogh in the “Playboy of the Western World”. Seanie is one of the great put upon eejits in Irish Theatre. Every play set in the Emerald Isle has one. The guy who is always half a page behind the rest of the cast, the one who thinks the female lead is in love with him, only to get his comeuppance in hilarious circumstances at the end of both Act 1 and 2.

I made these roles my own to the extent that one of the group’s Life members embraced me after that play and told me that “you do gormless better than anyone else in the company”. It was my proudest moment.

As my belly expanded, my roles developed into bumbling detectives and lay about husbands, but I struggled to become the centre of the audience’s attention. In one performance I found myself at the edge of the stage in a state of mournful reflection. It was a poignant moment before the end of the play and I was trying to emote the loss and devastation that my character felt. I heard a whisper among the blue rinses, who through lack of hearing dominated the front row.

“Who’s he then?” one asked to her wheelchair bound companion.

“He’s the fat bloke from Act 1”.

I was crushed but determined to continue. When I moved to Australia I was curious to see how things compare here to back home. I got a part in a play shortly after arriving. I played a gormless idiot (surprise, surprise) and I guess the biggest difference I noted was that this play was performed in 36c heat, a misery I had never endured in Dublin. It was fun, but the social elements weren’t the same.

Australians take everything very seriously. For example, Cricket clubs in Ireland will have eight teams and basically every team from the fours downwards will be in it for the fun and the beer afterwards in the club bar. In Melbourne, cricket is hugely popular, but clubs will generally have only two teams. The firsts, who will be highly competitive and the seconds who comprise people desperate to get into the firsts. If you’re not in it to win, then they don’t want you.

It’s kind of the same in theatre here. They don’t like calling it amateur theatre for a start. It has to be called “Community Theatre” because everything is professional except the pay. The plays are magnificent and they definitely stretch the abilities of the actors. But sometimes you have to pinch yourself to remind your jaded body that you do this for fun.

I’ll keep looking though. There are lots of drama groups in Melbourne and surely one of them has a tousled haired Englishman, ready to welcome new members and keen to go for a Guinness.

Thursday 23 July 2009

The Tour De France on St Kilda Road

If you believe that TV has no influence on kids, then I would invite you to look out your window and see what kids are up to. I think the first thing you’ll notice is the number of kids on bikes, wearing Lycra and travelling in packs, like a junior peloton. Those not on bikes will be finding empty spaces across which they can sling a rope and engage in some back yard tennis. And the reason for this? The Tour De France is on telly and Wimbledon has just finished.

Kids are not the only ones influenced by the Tour De France. I saw my first Astana cycling top on the way to work this morning. I guess its owner, a portly Gentleman in his forties who was taking the term ‘figure-hugging’ to a new level, was wearing it as a tribute to Lance Armstrong. Or perhaps he realised that Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan and he was making a Borat/Bruno fashion statement.

In any event, it made him fit in with the other Lycra wearing fanatics who gathered at the traffic lights at the top of St Kilda road. They had the wrap around glasses, clip on shoes and shaved legs of true professionals. Except these were office workers on the way into the City. I ambled up beside them in my ill-fitting fleece and baggy shorts and drew the occasional sneer in the way Michael Schumacher would if somebody pulled up beside him on a Honda 50.

There is a caste system in play and I was down with the street sweepers while the Lycra boys were Brahmin. I soothed my social inferiority by silently mocking the advertising that adorned their shirts. Why do people pay good money to advertise Saxo Bank, Bbox Bouygues Telecom and other European brands that they’ve never heard of? I refuse to be a mobile advertisement even if I could fit into the clothes.
The lights changed and we were off, speeding towards the City while trying to avoid speeding motorists and badly timed door openings.

A howling Northerly was in our face and everybody wanted to tuck in behind someone else, just as we had watched the riders do in France. Unfortunately, the cycle lane on St Kilda road is narrower than a duck’s backside, so we weren’t able to do the fanned formation as seen in the team time trial. Instead we quickly formed a long line and thanked our lucky stars that we weren’t the guy at the front.

By the third traffic light, the guy at the front had realised that he was dragging 20others up the road and he was pretty bitter about it. We had neglected our team duties and failed to take our turn at the front. I felt a pang of Catholic guilt and decided it was time I discovered my inner domestique. I wasn’t going to be a hero however and I let the Lycra boys take off first. I then stepped on the pedals and presented myself as the leader of the baggy shorts and baggy jumper’s brigade.

Cycling into the wind was like clambering through soup. And not a nice clear soup either but a thick and creamy one. I glanced behind to see how many of my colleagues had joined the train. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My baggy friends were scattered down the road like sprinters trying to make it to the top of Alp d’Huez. Only one guy had managed to stay with my manic pace and was desperately hugging my back wheel as though we were connected by an umbilical cord.

Half way along the road I started to fade. The wind was sapping my energy and the small bowl of cornflakes I had consumed before leaving had long since worked their way through my metabolism. I looked behind and my passenger was still clinging on. I’d seen this on stage 14 of the tour. George Hincapie had done all the work in a break away and was anxious that someone else should take their turn at the front. George flicked his elbow furiously at them which I took to be the international symbol for “get your arse up here and do some work”. I tried it with my passenger but had little luck. He knew he could get a free trip if he ignored me.

I tried going slower and weaving in and out like a drunken sailor but to no affect. He stubbornly stayed on my back wheel until we crossed St Kilda Road Bridge and came into the City Centre. Then like a Tour de France stage winner he clicked into a higher gear and passed me in a sickening blur. I tried desperately to take his wheel but the exertion of giving him a free ride was too much for me.

My honour had been slighted and I felt the bitter taste of defeat. The finishing line was close at hand but ahead one wobbly cyclist seemed to be struggling even more than me. I set my sights on overtaking her before the finish and summoned up one last push. I caught her just before the line, straining my neck and raising a pumped fist in triumph. I looked across and noticed that she had a basket on the front of her bike, was wearing jeans and high heeled shoes and was riding one of those small wheeled machines that could best be described as the bike for people who hate bikes.

In a sliding scale of cyclists with skinny Lycra fanatics at the top, girls in high heels with baskets on the front of their bikes would be at the other end. But no matter, like Alberto Contador in this year’s tour, I’ll take my victories wherever I find them. And as for that guy who stole a ride from me this morning, I hope you get a flat tyre on the way home tonight.

Sunday 12 July 2009

A Broken Pedal on the road to Woodford

The sun only seems to shine in Ireland during recession years, as though God is trying to offer some compensation for the vagaries of the market. In the ten years of the Celtic Tiger, the summers were damp and chilly, which gave people an extra excuse, as though one was needed, to head off for two months to their villa in Spain, bought from selling shares during the dotcom bubble.

This year as the economy has gone south, the mercury has been rising and my peeling arms are testament to the power of the Irish sun. Rather ironically, I have lived in Australia for two years without developing a tan. Three weeks in Ireland and I’m like a ripe plum.

It was also like that back in 1991 in the days before the tiger was even a glint in the Mammy tiger’s eye. The only job opportunities were at the end of a boat or plane ride and college summers were spent washing dishes in Martha’s Vineyard or pulling pints in an ugly Irish theme bar in Munich.

Ray was a college student back then, but his ambitions didn’t even stretch to dishwashing. He was happy to sleep for the summer and let the big world wait for his graduation. He worked occasionally in his Dad’s hardware shop, helping out when old Jim was unwell with his heart and when the cattle fair was in town. On those days, a steady stream of farmers would visit the shop to stock up on bailing twine and pungent pesticides and Ray would earn enough to keep him in beer and curry chips for the week.

Our paths crossed one sunny morning in July 1991. I was on a cycling holiday down the west coast of Ireland, criss-crossing the back roads of Galway. We came to a small incline and I climbed from the saddle of my bike to attack the hill like Lance Armstrong in the Alps. I weighed a lot less then than I do now, but it was still enough to exert unbearable pressure on the pedal and it snapped violently, providing my testicles with an unfortunate introduction to the crossbar of my bike.

I dusted myself down, expressed some choice swearwords and studied my options. The bike was clearly unrideable and I was in the middle of the countryside with only some curious cows for company. Luckily a van passed and took me and the stricken machine into Woodford and pointed out the hardware shop. I walked in full of confidence that my dilemma was about to be solved. But Ray’s Dad was quick to bring me down to earth. Rural hardware shops service the farming industry and don’t tend to stock cycling equipment on the off chance that a passing cyclist might need a spare part.

Amazingly, he actually did have a pedal, but it was the British variety and I was riding a French bike. It seems that in the time of Napoleon, he not only decreed that Europeans should drive on the right hand side of the road, he also said that bicycle pedals had to have a different thread to those pesky Brits.

I was crestfallen, but Ray’s dad suddenly had an idea. Ray apparently had a French bike and we could take a pedal off that, attach it to my bike and bob’s your uncle. It seemed like a great plan to me but I was slightly concerned at how Ray would feel about having one pedal thereafter. Ray’s Dad didn’t think this was a problem as they could pick up a spare pedal in Galway City later that week. He thought a bigger problem would be getting Ray out of bed at 11.30am on a Tuesday morning.

I waited outside until a sleepy Ray appeared, not looking the least upset that his rest had been disturbed by the need to give a complete stranger a piece of his own bike. He led me round the back so that he could examine the problem through sleep filled eyes. He noticed a flaw straight away. The pedal had snapped off just above the thread and it was impossible to get traction on the broken stump to screw it out. He stroked his bum fluff covered chin before nodding sagely. I stood there helpless like the pitiful accountant I am, unable to offer any help apart from holding the bike upright while he examined it.

“I have a lathe in the shed and that might do the trick”, he said. I nodded, pretending that I understood what a lathe was.

Two hours later, he finally extracted the broken pedal, having worked the lathe with all the care and attention of a Waterford crystal maker. He then looked mournfully at his own bike and removed a pedal as though he was extracting one of his own kidneys. Minutes later, I was all set and ready to hit the road again. I reached for my wallet and Ray shuffled uncomfortably.

“I can’t take money off you”, he said. “Sure I only gave you an old pedal off my bike”.

It was my turn to be uncomfortable. “Listen, you got me out of a big hole here and it’s taken you a lot of effort, not to mention the fact that you now have to buy a new pedal and travel into the city to get it”.

“You’re on holiday”, he said. “And you’ve had a bit of an accident. It would be wrong for me to take advantage of that”.

I tried arguing with him for another ten minutes but he was not for turning. In the end, I worked on his old man. He was also mortified that I wanted to offer money and tried to pretend that it was their problem for not having the right product in the first place. Eventually, I left twenty pounds on the counter and implored him to treat his son to a few pints. I raced out before he could object and climbed back on the bike with a renewed faith in the strength of human decency.

That incident became the highlight of my holiday and made me proud to be Irish. Later on, as I lived in Ireland through the Tiger Years, I always thought of Ray when I was being ripped off by shops and tradesmen. That afternoon in Woodford seemed to belong to a different age, when decency and kindness were more important to us than profit.

I’d like to think that Ireland is regaining some of that decency and the Irish tourist board is launching a campaign to try and harness this, so that tourists feel more welcome.

They could start by trying to track Ray and his Dad down and to ask them for advice. I still have the broken pedal and perhaps they could use that as symbol for the country we once had before we sold it to the devil.