It was coming up to Christmas in 1987. Ireland was going through a recession not unlike the one it now faces. Property developers were going bust like three day old balloons and Dublin airport was filled with families welcoming home emigrant children.
I had the good fortune of having a job in a recession proof industry at the time. We were nominally an accounting practice but at the time, we made most of our money from liquidations and receiverships. As a card carrying Socialist, I had the occasional squirm of conscience in carrying out this task but most failed ventures were pubs and hotels run by dodgy businessmen who deserved little sympathy.
But sometimes we’d come across a deal that pulled at the heartstrings. Property developers do not normally fall into this category. These days they have a reputation up there with war criminals and pedophiles at the moment but unfortunately they don’t live in splendid isolation. When they go down, like a king at the top of a deck of cards, they bring down lots of ordinary people with them.
The guy we were dealing with was building a school for the Government (probably the only building work going on the time) and had employed a number of sub contractors who worked for a year on the project and were promised payment upon completion when the government cheque would come in.
It was a façade based on the never/never. He ran up an overdraft with the bank and ignored the advice of his accountants that it was all going to end in disaster. And so it did. When the cheque came in from the Government, it was barely enough to pay off the bank and accountants. And so, the poor old subbies who had worked for a year with no pay were left with nothing.
Lots of them turned up at our office, anxious for news on whether they would get any payment. We didn’t have the heart to tell them that Capitalism looks after it’s own and in a dog eat dog world, it’s no fun being a poodle.
It didn’t take us long to see that a massive fraud had taken place. The bank could see the writing on the wall and was ready to pull the plug and force the company into liquidation. The company’s auditors convened a hurried meeting between the bank and the development companies Managing Director. They stupidly left a copy of the minutes of that meeting on the file they handed over to us and we didn’t need to be Wikileaks to spot its importance.
The deal they struck allowed the company to continue until the government payment came in. On that day, the developer wrote and cashed two cheques. One for his outstanding salary from the business and the other for the company’s accountancy fee. What was left wasn’t enough to cover the overdraft at the bank but it brought it down to a level they could live with. The following day, the company went into voluntary liquidation and the taxman and the sub contractors were left with nothing but sour memories.
I called into my boss’s office with the news of this crime and I felt pretty chuffed with myself. I worked in a sleepy provincial town and it wasn’t often that you caught the countries biggest bank and the town’s largest auditors in a massive fraud. He saw it differently of course. Business was business back then and he wasn’t about to sue the people who gave us most of our insolvency work. I tried to argue but he convinced me that the sub contractors wouldn’t be helped anyway and I gave in.
Two days later I was working late when a knock came to the front door. I answered it and two guys in leather jackets asked for my boss. He was the official liquidator and his name was on all the letters we had sent to creditors. They claimed to represent one of them, a carpenter that was owed about 11 grand, a year’s income in those days. I explained that the boss wasn’t in but they didn’t seem to believe me. It was at that point that one them pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun sticking out of his belt. Suddenly I felt like I was trapped in a gangster movie and that Buggsy Malone was going to appear and rescue me.
I’d like to say I did something heroic, but all I could muster was a croaky response that I would do my best to get word to my boss. I eventually tracked him down and two days later the managing director of the development company met the carpenter and handed over an envelope containing approximately 11 grand. I was left pretty disillusioned by the whole affair, particularly as I’d sat in several meetings where the developer had sworn to my face that he had lost everything in the collapse.
I guess I learned never to trust developers after that which might explain why I never got caught up in the property frenzy that defined Celtic Tiger Ireland. It also shows that Irish Banks didn’t just learn dodgy practices in the naughties. They have always been more interested in protecting their own interests with scant regard for the little people or the law.
The other party to come out that affair smelling badly was the accountants. As one myself, I’m pained to admit that they were major conspirators in the black economy that poisoned the 1980’s and they also haven’t covered themselves in glory in Ireland’s recent troubles. Think of all those bankrupt banks that received clean audit reports or insolvent builders that were allowed to trade for longer than they should because some accountant had said they were in the black.
If you’re looking for culprits in the wreckage of the Irish economy, then look no further than the Accountants, Banks and builders. I just hope that there are no guns involved these days.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Thursday 9 December 2010
How many Economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Back in the dark days of 1981, I was about to enter my last year of secondary school. It was a time of big decisions. How would I spend my 50p pocket money that week? Should I ask my mate Dave to pass a note to a girl he knew that I fancied? And what should I drop from my final exam list. In our school, you studied eight subjects until the beginning of your final year. Then you had to drop one before the final push for glory.
In my case, it was a choice between History and Economics, or a toss up between the future and the past, as it was explained to me at the time. After some thought,(well as much as I could squeeze in between thinking about girls and football) I decided to drop Economics. I was much more comfortable with the ghosts of the past, than I was with the uncertainty of the future. My previous year in class had thought me that if you put two Economists in a room, you’d end up with three opinions.
It was custom to stand outside class on the first day of final year to break the news to whichever teacher you were spurning. Most of them took it well as you were normally dropping a subject that you hated and were crap at. And the teacher generally held similar opinions about you. I was in a more delicate position. Economics was actually my best subject. I scored top marks in class the previous summer and our teacher; Mr. Dunne treated me like I was John Maynard Keynes.
There were eight of us waiting that day and apart from my good self, the other seven had been told to be there to discuss their future with Mr. Dunne. Some would be told to drop Economics altogether while the rest were been shipped down to the lower level class where the only requirement for entry was that you knew which end of the pencil to use for writing.
Most of them took it well but one poor soul made a last desperate attempt to cling on. “Mr. Dunne, I think I am well placed to excel in Economics, I have a fundamental understanding of the concepts and I think my summer exams demonstrate this”, he said in a staccato voice which suggested that he was repeating a prepared speech his Father had drummed into him the night before.
“You got 14% in your summer exams”, Mr. Dunne said drily. The poor soul looked indignant and his face reddened. “I got 15% sir”, he blurted.
I wanted to point out that there was a 7% difference in their assessments, which was within the margin of error of most economic forecasts. But I sensibly judged that neither of them were in the mood for humor.
Finally I was alone with Mr. Dunne and got to deliver my break up speech. I started with a “It’s not you, it’s me” approach and moved into a more “Can we still be friends” tactic when this wasn’t working. Mr. Dunne was pretty upset and told me I throwing away the chance of a top grade in my final exams. I was prepared for this however and explained that I had confidence that I could obtain the same grade in History. At this point, he asked me to wait where I was while he summoned my History teacher from the staff room. I watched the two of them march towards me and felt happy that my favorite teacher was coming to defend me. Alas, he had surrender in mind.
“Why are you dropping Economics”? He asked. “Mr. Dunne here tells me that you’ll get an A in your Leaving exam.”
“I think I’ll get an A in History too”, I confidently replied.
“No, you won’t, you’ll get a C”, he told me.
I was shocked at the betrayal, but dug my heels in. A year later I opened up my exam results and found that my History teacher was right. I was disappointed and asked myself “if only”. If only he’d been as good at teaching as he was at predictions.
Twenty nines later however I am regretting that I didn’t stick with Mr. Dunne. Who would have guessed that economists would suddenly become sexy? It’s hard to turn on the TV these days or open a newspaper and not see some pointed head guru tell you that the world is going to hell in a handcart. The Irish media is certainly full of that and the website irisheconomy.ie is probably more subscribed these days than pornography. Economists are lining up to say “I told you so” when most of them championed the Celtic Tiger and told the Irish people there would be a soft landing. In hindsight I think they meant that Ireland was going to land in the shit but they didn’t explain it that way.
I notice that five of the top ten bestsellers in Ireland now are written about or by economists. Who would have thought that if I’d just stuck with it, I could have fulfilled my dream and become a published author. I suspect I would have been greedy however and tried to corner more than just the dry economic market. I would have told the story of the death of the Irish Tiger by having vampires attack the Central Bank (for the teenage girl market) while having the female head of the ECB fall madly in love with the evil master of the IMF and have them engage in wild sex in a back room of government buildings while the Minister for Finance filled in the country’s bankruptcy papers upstairs. I can see Hollywood buying up the rights as I type, with Jennifer Aniston and Russell Crowe in the lead parts.
Perhaps I could find a role for Mr. Dunne. Although I dropped economics that year, he thought me enough to see that the bubble was bursting and it was time to get the hell out. For that I am very grateful.
In my case, it was a choice between History and Economics, or a toss up between the future and the past, as it was explained to me at the time. After some thought,(well as much as I could squeeze in between thinking about girls and football) I decided to drop Economics. I was much more comfortable with the ghosts of the past, than I was with the uncertainty of the future. My previous year in class had thought me that if you put two Economists in a room, you’d end up with three opinions.
It was custom to stand outside class on the first day of final year to break the news to whichever teacher you were spurning. Most of them took it well as you were normally dropping a subject that you hated and were crap at. And the teacher generally held similar opinions about you. I was in a more delicate position. Economics was actually my best subject. I scored top marks in class the previous summer and our teacher; Mr. Dunne treated me like I was John Maynard Keynes.
There were eight of us waiting that day and apart from my good self, the other seven had been told to be there to discuss their future with Mr. Dunne. Some would be told to drop Economics altogether while the rest were been shipped down to the lower level class where the only requirement for entry was that you knew which end of the pencil to use for writing.
Most of them took it well but one poor soul made a last desperate attempt to cling on. “Mr. Dunne, I think I am well placed to excel in Economics, I have a fundamental understanding of the concepts and I think my summer exams demonstrate this”, he said in a staccato voice which suggested that he was repeating a prepared speech his Father had drummed into him the night before.
“You got 14% in your summer exams”, Mr. Dunne said drily. The poor soul looked indignant and his face reddened. “I got 15% sir”, he blurted.
I wanted to point out that there was a 7% difference in their assessments, which was within the margin of error of most economic forecasts. But I sensibly judged that neither of them were in the mood for humor.
Finally I was alone with Mr. Dunne and got to deliver my break up speech. I started with a “It’s not you, it’s me” approach and moved into a more “Can we still be friends” tactic when this wasn’t working. Mr. Dunne was pretty upset and told me I throwing away the chance of a top grade in my final exams. I was prepared for this however and explained that I had confidence that I could obtain the same grade in History. At this point, he asked me to wait where I was while he summoned my History teacher from the staff room. I watched the two of them march towards me and felt happy that my favorite teacher was coming to defend me. Alas, he had surrender in mind.
“Why are you dropping Economics”? He asked. “Mr. Dunne here tells me that you’ll get an A in your Leaving exam.”
“I think I’ll get an A in History too”, I confidently replied.
“No, you won’t, you’ll get a C”, he told me.
I was shocked at the betrayal, but dug my heels in. A year later I opened up my exam results and found that my History teacher was right. I was disappointed and asked myself “if only”. If only he’d been as good at teaching as he was at predictions.
Twenty nines later however I am regretting that I didn’t stick with Mr. Dunne. Who would have guessed that economists would suddenly become sexy? It’s hard to turn on the TV these days or open a newspaper and not see some pointed head guru tell you that the world is going to hell in a handcart. The Irish media is certainly full of that and the website irisheconomy.ie is probably more subscribed these days than pornography. Economists are lining up to say “I told you so” when most of them championed the Celtic Tiger and told the Irish people there would be a soft landing. In hindsight I think they meant that Ireland was going to land in the shit but they didn’t explain it that way.
I notice that five of the top ten bestsellers in Ireland now are written about or by economists. Who would have thought that if I’d just stuck with it, I could have fulfilled my dream and become a published author. I suspect I would have been greedy however and tried to corner more than just the dry economic market. I would have told the story of the death of the Irish Tiger by having vampires attack the Central Bank (for the teenage girl market) while having the female head of the ECB fall madly in love with the evil master of the IMF and have them engage in wild sex in a back room of government buildings while the Minister for Finance filled in the country’s bankruptcy papers upstairs. I can see Hollywood buying up the rights as I type, with Jennifer Aniston and Russell Crowe in the lead parts.
Perhaps I could find a role for Mr. Dunne. Although I dropped economics that year, he thought me enough to see that the bubble was bursting and it was time to get the hell out. For that I am very grateful.
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
The papers here are full of stories about the Irish bailout and the fact that some toff in England is marrying a poor person. Although to judge by the house her parents stood in front of when they were on the news, I’d have to guess that the Brits have a different view of what poor means to the rest of the world.
Ireland is certainly poor at the moment if the media is anything to go by. But then again I also read that it’s still the third richest country in Europe. Which I guess just goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and everything the Irish Government has said for the last three years.
At least Ireland can be proud of its diaspora (with the exception of myself and the disproportionate amount of us who end up in jail in the countries we choose to live in). I recently visited two museums hoping to find some reference to the Irish in Victoria. One thing I noticed when I arrived in this fine state is that there is no obvious Irish part of town. The Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Indian communities all have their areas, mostly built around food. Needless to say the Irish are unlikely to build up a reputation in the culinary department but it does disappoint me that the only obvious influence we have here is the amount of Irish pubs in the City.
There are lots of people with Irish names but most of them speak with Aussie accents and upon inquiry it turns out that their nearest Irish relative came here on a wooden boat where the only metal was around their ankles.
The immigration museum was my first stop. It was full of exhibits about “ten pound poms” and brave Vietnamese who spent six months in a leaky boat in the 1970s. The only reference I could find to the Irish was on a small computer screen at the back where you could click on a country and find out how many people from that place ended up in Victoria. It turns out that we mainly came here in the years after the Great Famine to escape hunger and seek fortune on the gold fields. Two hundred thousand arrived then, but we’ve only been coming in dribs and drabs since.
The other museum I visited was in a little place called Port Fairy, famous for a folk festival held every March that is dominated by Irish acts. But it turns out our only influence there was to give the town it’s original name of Belfast, which they sensibly changed after a few years when the realised they were twinned with a place best known for sectarian violence and fried bread for breakfast. Port Fairy sounds much more benign.
But those Irish people who came in the 19th Century have left a great legacy in Australia. Peter Lalor from Laois is my favourite as he is often identified with the birth of democracy here. He led the Eureka rising in 1854, when a thousand minors, most of them from Ireland, formed Victoria’s first trade union and formed a stockade against the tyranny of the government. They were smashed by the army but their deeds became famous and are thought to be the reason why Australians have a healthy disregard for authority and a strong believe in giving everyone a fair go.
They had their own flag, which can be seen on every unionised building site in Melbourne and amongst football supporters when they want to demonstrate a communal feel.
I reckon my homeland could do with a touch of that communal feel at the moment. As an Irishman abroad I’m wavering between embarrassment and relief at the moment. Embarrassment as anyone who hears my accent is quick to point out that my country is a laughing stock. Asking for a bailout is bad enough but when you’ve spent the previous ten years displaying your wealth to the world like a premiership football star, the world tends to take pleasure in laughing at your hubris.
But I lost this embarrassment when a Greek person asked me how Ireland got to this position. People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones and it demonstrated to me that the whole world is in a pickle and Ireland is merely the latest cab off the rank.
Relief is my more common emotion because I can now take on the hubris previously shown by my countrymen (I picked it up for a bargain at a recent liquidation sale). I got out just in time in seems and can smugly say; “I told you so”. Except I don’t say this because I’m too sad for all the friends and family I didn’t bring with me.
Before I left, there was a General Election and I tried to convince as many people as possible not to vote for the government. I failed in that respect and that government has now destroyed the country my grandfathers fought to set up. Their latest act of folly is to seek a bailout from the IMF at an interest rate that Tony Soprano would be embarrassed to impose on a late paying drug addict. When I was a young fellow, the IMF went into countries like Argentina and various places in Africa. Ireland is now part of that of that sad club. Although I have to say it’s rich of the IMF to come into a country and lecture them on fiscal restraint when the IMF are part of the global capitalist structure that caused all the problems in the first place.
But there is a risk of course that we’ll do what Irish people have done for centuries and blame everyone else for our woes. It wasn’t the IMF, or the Germans or the Brits who made us buy holiday villas in Romania on 100% credit. It’s tough times ahead for Ireland and I just hope a new leadership emerges. We could do worse than have the ghost of Peter Lalor emerge and return to the land of his birth.
Ireland is certainly poor at the moment if the media is anything to go by. But then again I also read that it’s still the third richest country in Europe. Which I guess just goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and everything the Irish Government has said for the last three years.
At least Ireland can be proud of its diaspora (with the exception of myself and the disproportionate amount of us who end up in jail in the countries we choose to live in). I recently visited two museums hoping to find some reference to the Irish in Victoria. One thing I noticed when I arrived in this fine state is that there is no obvious Irish part of town. The Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Indian communities all have their areas, mostly built around food. Needless to say the Irish are unlikely to build up a reputation in the culinary department but it does disappoint me that the only obvious influence we have here is the amount of Irish pubs in the City.
There are lots of people with Irish names but most of them speak with Aussie accents and upon inquiry it turns out that their nearest Irish relative came here on a wooden boat where the only metal was around their ankles.
The immigration museum was my first stop. It was full of exhibits about “ten pound poms” and brave Vietnamese who spent six months in a leaky boat in the 1970s. The only reference I could find to the Irish was on a small computer screen at the back where you could click on a country and find out how many people from that place ended up in Victoria. It turns out that we mainly came here in the years after the Great Famine to escape hunger and seek fortune on the gold fields. Two hundred thousand arrived then, but we’ve only been coming in dribs and drabs since.
The other museum I visited was in a little place called Port Fairy, famous for a folk festival held every March that is dominated by Irish acts. But it turns out our only influence there was to give the town it’s original name of Belfast, which they sensibly changed after a few years when the realised they were twinned with a place best known for sectarian violence and fried bread for breakfast. Port Fairy sounds much more benign.
But those Irish people who came in the 19th Century have left a great legacy in Australia. Peter Lalor from Laois is my favourite as he is often identified with the birth of democracy here. He led the Eureka rising in 1854, when a thousand minors, most of them from Ireland, formed Victoria’s first trade union and formed a stockade against the tyranny of the government. They were smashed by the army but their deeds became famous and are thought to be the reason why Australians have a healthy disregard for authority and a strong believe in giving everyone a fair go.
They had their own flag, which can be seen on every unionised building site in Melbourne and amongst football supporters when they want to demonstrate a communal feel.
I reckon my homeland could do with a touch of that communal feel at the moment. As an Irishman abroad I’m wavering between embarrassment and relief at the moment. Embarrassment as anyone who hears my accent is quick to point out that my country is a laughing stock. Asking for a bailout is bad enough but when you’ve spent the previous ten years displaying your wealth to the world like a premiership football star, the world tends to take pleasure in laughing at your hubris.
But I lost this embarrassment when a Greek person asked me how Ireland got to this position. People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones and it demonstrated to me that the whole world is in a pickle and Ireland is merely the latest cab off the rank.
Relief is my more common emotion because I can now take on the hubris previously shown by my countrymen (I picked it up for a bargain at a recent liquidation sale). I got out just in time in seems and can smugly say; “I told you so”. Except I don’t say this because I’m too sad for all the friends and family I didn’t bring with me.
Before I left, there was a General Election and I tried to convince as many people as possible not to vote for the government. I failed in that respect and that government has now destroyed the country my grandfathers fought to set up. Their latest act of folly is to seek a bailout from the IMF at an interest rate that Tony Soprano would be embarrassed to impose on a late paying drug addict. When I was a young fellow, the IMF went into countries like Argentina and various places in Africa. Ireland is now part of that of that sad club. Although I have to say it’s rich of the IMF to come into a country and lecture them on fiscal restraint when the IMF are part of the global capitalist structure that caused all the problems in the first place.
But there is a risk of course that we’ll do what Irish people have done for centuries and blame everyone else for our woes. It wasn’t the IMF, or the Germans or the Brits who made us buy holiday villas in Romania on 100% credit. It’s tough times ahead for Ireland and I just hope a new leadership emerges. We could do worse than have the ghost of Peter Lalor emerge and return to the land of his birth.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
American Pie
It’s 9pm in Zio’s, a small Italian restaurant in Sydney that specialises in selling tiny portions to tourists who will never come back. The staff are getting a bit frazzled because Tony the boss wants the clientele turned over every 45 minutes. So when you’ve just put your fork down after eating the seven pieces of Tortellini that they call a ‘main’ meal they shove a menu for desert under your still hungry nose.
I don’t normally eat afters but the main course didn’t fill me and I start to understand their business model.
As I’m pondering over the tiramisu or gelati a bunch of Americans come in. You can tell they are yanks because of their size. Europeans tend to have one fat friend in every group (I used to rent myself out for this purpose). But Americans are the opposite. They are a bunch of fat people who hang around with one skinny guy that they abuse for having an eating disorder.
They spent an age studying the menu while the waiter hovered over them. Ginny ordered first. “I’ll have the side salad with no olives and no dressing”. Now I don’t like olives myself but I’ve never found the need to refuse them. They are fairly easy to spot after all and I usually push them to the side and then offer them to one of my dining companions who doesn’t mind something with the taste of rubber and the texture of an old boot.
But Americans can’t look at a menu without changing it. Louis was Ginny’s companion. He wanted the Veal Cutlet with no breadcrumbs, presumably working under the assumption that the chef had a live calf out the back and could kill and prepare it any way you chose.
The waiter tried to explain that most of the food was prepared earlier and when you order it, they basically just heat it up. He might as well have said that he fiddles with small boys by the look the Americans gave him.
I assume they think everything is cooked fresh which is ironic considering they come from a country that invented spray on cheese and food that tastes like it was cooked in the 1970’s.
But it’s easy to poke fun at Americans. They offer a big target after all. Some of them are smart it must be said. My bosses, bosses boss (basically a lot of levels above me) was in Melbourne this week and she came across as a smart lady. She understood there are 14 hours difference between here and New York in Winter and 16 hours difference for the rest of the year. Seems logical to me that clocks change one way in the Northern hemisphere and they change the other way in the Southern. But it seems to confuse most Americans who think it’s normal that I should get up at 4am for a conference call.
I’m sitting here typing this on an Apple Macbook that was invented in America (although probably built in a cave somewhere in China) while listening to music on Youtube, a website also set up by clever people in California. And if you want to see more smart Americans then go and watch “The Social Network”. It’s full of nerdy yanks doing complicated things with maths and computers that leads them to set up Facebook.
I saw it last week in the company of three hundred Gen Y kids. A group of them sat in front of me and as the opening credits rolled they took out their smart phones in unison and logged onto Facebook so that they could poke their friends (I believe that’s the technical term) with the witty message that they were watching a movie about Facebook while surfing the website. It was all very 2010 and made me feel suddenly old.
The social networking phenomenon has passed me by. Although that hasn’t stopped Linkedin sending me messages every day telling me that the world and his brother want to connect with me. I may not know much about these sites, but it’s clear to me that Linkedin is the next big thing. Myspace is now an abandoned theme park and Bebo has gone back to being the name of a Spanish clown and not a means for 12 year olds to post dodgy pictures of their teachers.
Facebook might have thought it had a clear run of that space on the web reserved for people without the social skills to talk to real live humans, but Linkedin is coming up on the rails. I received an invitation to join three years ago and invites to connect to others used to come in every six months or so. But this week, I’ve received three. So I’m going to make some predictions. Jesse Eisenberg will win next years Oscar for best male actor and Linkedin will overtake Facebook in membership. It’s aimed at desk bound professionals after all and they spend more time on the internet each day than even the Gen Y people.
Back at the restaurant, Ginny pulled out her Blackberry, the communication toy of the sort of people who prefer Linkedin to Facebook. “I’m just going to email Steve in the Santa Monica office. He told me this place was excellent and they can’t even do a Decaf Double Shot Soy Latte. I’m not going to listen to him again”.
“Isn’t it like 10 o’clock in Santa Monica or something?”, Louis said. “Is that 10 o’clock in the morning or the evening?” replied Ginny. A strange calm descended upon the table which made me realise that the best way to shut Americans up is to ask them a timezone question.
The moral of the story is that you can’t reduce a country that has produced both Woody Allen and George Bush to a simple cultural stereotype. And anyway, we’re all part of a dynamic global community now. One in which Ginny had just unfriended Steve, her erstwhile restaurant suggester.
I don’t normally eat afters but the main course didn’t fill me and I start to understand their business model.
As I’m pondering over the tiramisu or gelati a bunch of Americans come in. You can tell they are yanks because of their size. Europeans tend to have one fat friend in every group (I used to rent myself out for this purpose). But Americans are the opposite. They are a bunch of fat people who hang around with one skinny guy that they abuse for having an eating disorder.
They spent an age studying the menu while the waiter hovered over them. Ginny ordered first. “I’ll have the side salad with no olives and no dressing”. Now I don’t like olives myself but I’ve never found the need to refuse them. They are fairly easy to spot after all and I usually push them to the side and then offer them to one of my dining companions who doesn’t mind something with the taste of rubber and the texture of an old boot.
But Americans can’t look at a menu without changing it. Louis was Ginny’s companion. He wanted the Veal Cutlet with no breadcrumbs, presumably working under the assumption that the chef had a live calf out the back and could kill and prepare it any way you chose.
The waiter tried to explain that most of the food was prepared earlier and when you order it, they basically just heat it up. He might as well have said that he fiddles with small boys by the look the Americans gave him.
I assume they think everything is cooked fresh which is ironic considering they come from a country that invented spray on cheese and food that tastes like it was cooked in the 1970’s.
But it’s easy to poke fun at Americans. They offer a big target after all. Some of them are smart it must be said. My bosses, bosses boss (basically a lot of levels above me) was in Melbourne this week and she came across as a smart lady. She understood there are 14 hours difference between here and New York in Winter and 16 hours difference for the rest of the year. Seems logical to me that clocks change one way in the Northern hemisphere and they change the other way in the Southern. But it seems to confuse most Americans who think it’s normal that I should get up at 4am for a conference call.
I’m sitting here typing this on an Apple Macbook that was invented in America (although probably built in a cave somewhere in China) while listening to music on Youtube, a website also set up by clever people in California. And if you want to see more smart Americans then go and watch “The Social Network”. It’s full of nerdy yanks doing complicated things with maths and computers that leads them to set up Facebook.
I saw it last week in the company of three hundred Gen Y kids. A group of them sat in front of me and as the opening credits rolled they took out their smart phones in unison and logged onto Facebook so that they could poke their friends (I believe that’s the technical term) with the witty message that they were watching a movie about Facebook while surfing the website. It was all very 2010 and made me feel suddenly old.
The social networking phenomenon has passed me by. Although that hasn’t stopped Linkedin sending me messages every day telling me that the world and his brother want to connect with me. I may not know much about these sites, but it’s clear to me that Linkedin is the next big thing. Myspace is now an abandoned theme park and Bebo has gone back to being the name of a Spanish clown and not a means for 12 year olds to post dodgy pictures of their teachers.
Facebook might have thought it had a clear run of that space on the web reserved for people without the social skills to talk to real live humans, but Linkedin is coming up on the rails. I received an invitation to join three years ago and invites to connect to others used to come in every six months or so. But this week, I’ve received three. So I’m going to make some predictions. Jesse Eisenberg will win next years Oscar for best male actor and Linkedin will overtake Facebook in membership. It’s aimed at desk bound professionals after all and they spend more time on the internet each day than even the Gen Y people.
Back at the restaurant, Ginny pulled out her Blackberry, the communication toy of the sort of people who prefer Linkedin to Facebook. “I’m just going to email Steve in the Santa Monica office. He told me this place was excellent and they can’t even do a Decaf Double Shot Soy Latte. I’m not going to listen to him again”.
“Isn’t it like 10 o’clock in Santa Monica or something?”, Louis said. “Is that 10 o’clock in the morning or the evening?” replied Ginny. A strange calm descended upon the table which made me realise that the best way to shut Americans up is to ask them a timezone question.
The moral of the story is that you can’t reduce a country that has produced both Woody Allen and George Bush to a simple cultural stereotype. And anyway, we’re all part of a dynamic global community now. One in which Ginny had just unfriended Steve, her erstwhile restaurant suggester.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Annus Horribulis
I went back to work last week and a lot of people said to me, “it’s been a tough year, hasn’t it?”
I have to admit it has, but people don’t know the half of it. I mean Collingwood won the flag, didn’t they? But I’m looking on the bright side. I’m still here, I’ve been given the all clear by the cancer doctors (although once you’re in that system you never get out of it). And as my sister said, there are only seven weeks of the year left and if I don’t step in front of any buses between now and then I should be okay.
I guess most people lose a parent or two at some point in their life and have the occasional accident which might necessitate a visit to the local hospital. And one in three people get cancer. But I think it’s fair to say that I’m pretty unlucky to experience all this in the same year. Annus Horribulis was a term invented by the English Queen when she found out one of her sons was gay, one was an incurable womaniser and the other was talking to plants while his wife was sleeping with everyone in Britain with a double barrelled name.
I’m sure it was tough on her but I think I’ve trumped her.
The year started off badly. I swam in a river on Australia Day (January 26th) and picked up giardia which took me six weeks to shake. Mainly, I admit, because it took me that long to visit a doctor. I spent two weeks of that time in India which might sound like a double whammy, but actually that’s the best place to be if you have the shits because nobody turns a blind eye in India if you jump up and rush to the toilet and come back sweating.
Unfortunately, I spent the following week in Singapore, a country so proud of it’s cleanliness that I wonder if they use toilets at all.
I got over that in time to smack my face off St Kilda Road on the last day of March. I spent a couple of nights in hospital then which introduced me to the delights of the Australian medical system. Little did I know that by year end I’d be an expert on how to adjust the angle on hospital beds, how to operate the remote control for the TV (which is more complicated than key hole surgery) and crucially, how to negotiate an early release, because hospital is prison without the fun of football games in the yard.
I just about got over that when my mother decided to help me earn some air miles by traveling twice to Ireland in the space of three weeks. She earned a few herself, mind you, on her trip to Heaven.
I was getting over the jet lag from the trips to Ireland when my wisdom tooth decided to give out. Probably because I’d subjected it to twenty or so airplane meals over the previous three weeks, including some tasty mints that help your ears while landing while simultaneously setting about your teeth like a jack hammer.
I had it taken out by a nice lady dentist who was slightly horrified when I told her that I wanted to take the tooth home. I think dentists want to keep them and sell them to ivory poachers or something. She seemed very possessive anyway. Getting it taken out was fine but a few days later the place it came from got infected. Nature abhors a vacuum and it filled mine with food that I was too lazy to get rid of. I turned into a baby with the pain and had to plead with a young dentist in Singapore to sort it out. Her solution was to give me a bottle of pink liquid and a syringe and to encourage me to do it myself. Strangely enough it worked, which means that if my annus horriblus continues and I contract diabetes before year end, I will be well practiced in the art of self injecting.
Sport is often a positive distraction in times of misery, but this year it has followed my run of bad luck. Back home my beloved home county were robbed of their first title in fifty years by the worst piece of refereeing since England were awarded that goal in the 1966 World Cup. I follow AFL football over here and given that sport usually involves liking one team and hating another one with all your passion, I chose Collingwood for the latter. And needless to say in the year of misfortune they broke a twenty year duck and won the Grand Final.
But I guess that the plus side of getting cancer and surviving it is that you get a new perspective on life. For a start I’ve realised how many friends I have and how lucky I am to have a supportive and loving partner. Plus I’ve received cards, emails and presents from so many people I am truly humbled.
I think it’s time to stop and smell the flowers which is opportune because spring came to Melbourne this week and our street alone is awash with roses and colours that would give Willy Wonka a fit. I enjoyed the racing carnival last week and made my first visit to the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation. I’m not a big horse fan I admit. I couldn’t eat a whole one, although having said that I’ve actually eaten more of them than I’ve ridden.
I visited an Oncologist last week (a word I couldn’t spell never mind understand four weeks ago). He told me things are looking good but once the Big C has visited he likes to come back. So I’m booked in for a session of chemo next Wednesday which won’t be fun but will put me back on same level as the landbubbers (those of you who haven’t surfed on the Big C). And then it’s only 43 days until year end. Boy will I celebrate New Year’s Eve - my second life begins on January 1st!
I have to admit it has, but people don’t know the half of it. I mean Collingwood won the flag, didn’t they? But I’m looking on the bright side. I’m still here, I’ve been given the all clear by the cancer doctors (although once you’re in that system you never get out of it). And as my sister said, there are only seven weeks of the year left and if I don’t step in front of any buses between now and then I should be okay.
I guess most people lose a parent or two at some point in their life and have the occasional accident which might necessitate a visit to the local hospital. And one in three people get cancer. But I think it’s fair to say that I’m pretty unlucky to experience all this in the same year. Annus Horribulis was a term invented by the English Queen when she found out one of her sons was gay, one was an incurable womaniser and the other was talking to plants while his wife was sleeping with everyone in Britain with a double barrelled name.
I’m sure it was tough on her but I think I’ve trumped her.
The year started off badly. I swam in a river on Australia Day (January 26th) and picked up giardia which took me six weeks to shake. Mainly, I admit, because it took me that long to visit a doctor. I spent two weeks of that time in India which might sound like a double whammy, but actually that’s the best place to be if you have the shits because nobody turns a blind eye in India if you jump up and rush to the toilet and come back sweating.
Unfortunately, I spent the following week in Singapore, a country so proud of it’s cleanliness that I wonder if they use toilets at all.
I got over that in time to smack my face off St Kilda Road on the last day of March. I spent a couple of nights in hospital then which introduced me to the delights of the Australian medical system. Little did I know that by year end I’d be an expert on how to adjust the angle on hospital beds, how to operate the remote control for the TV (which is more complicated than key hole surgery) and crucially, how to negotiate an early release, because hospital is prison without the fun of football games in the yard.
I just about got over that when my mother decided to help me earn some air miles by traveling twice to Ireland in the space of three weeks. She earned a few herself, mind you, on her trip to Heaven.
I was getting over the jet lag from the trips to Ireland when my wisdom tooth decided to give out. Probably because I’d subjected it to twenty or so airplane meals over the previous three weeks, including some tasty mints that help your ears while landing while simultaneously setting about your teeth like a jack hammer.
I had it taken out by a nice lady dentist who was slightly horrified when I told her that I wanted to take the tooth home. I think dentists want to keep them and sell them to ivory poachers or something. She seemed very possessive anyway. Getting it taken out was fine but a few days later the place it came from got infected. Nature abhors a vacuum and it filled mine with food that I was too lazy to get rid of. I turned into a baby with the pain and had to plead with a young dentist in Singapore to sort it out. Her solution was to give me a bottle of pink liquid and a syringe and to encourage me to do it myself. Strangely enough it worked, which means that if my annus horriblus continues and I contract diabetes before year end, I will be well practiced in the art of self injecting.
Sport is often a positive distraction in times of misery, but this year it has followed my run of bad luck. Back home my beloved home county were robbed of their first title in fifty years by the worst piece of refereeing since England were awarded that goal in the 1966 World Cup. I follow AFL football over here and given that sport usually involves liking one team and hating another one with all your passion, I chose Collingwood for the latter. And needless to say in the year of misfortune they broke a twenty year duck and won the Grand Final.
But I guess that the plus side of getting cancer and surviving it is that you get a new perspective on life. For a start I’ve realised how many friends I have and how lucky I am to have a supportive and loving partner. Plus I’ve received cards, emails and presents from so many people I am truly humbled.
I think it’s time to stop and smell the flowers which is opportune because spring came to Melbourne this week and our street alone is awash with roses and colours that would give Willy Wonka a fit. I enjoyed the racing carnival last week and made my first visit to the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation. I’m not a big horse fan I admit. I couldn’t eat a whole one, although having said that I’ve actually eaten more of them than I’ve ridden.
I visited an Oncologist last week (a word I couldn’t spell never mind understand four weeks ago). He told me things are looking good but once the Big C has visited he likes to come back. So I’m booked in for a session of chemo next Wednesday which won’t be fun but will put me back on same level as the landbubbers (those of you who haven’t surfed on the Big C). And then it’s only 43 days until year end. Boy will I celebrate New Year’s Eve - my second life begins on January 1st!
Saturday 16 October 2010
Cancer Ward Two
When you put down your pen at the end of your last exam you are no longer a student. When you have sex for the first time, you are no longer a virgin. And when you are diagnosed with cancer you are no longer something. And what that something is I’m not quite sure. But that’s what I’m trying to get my head around.
I got good news during the week, which I guess is relative in the current circumstances. There is no indication that the cancer has spread beyond the tumour that now sits in a jar in some suburban pathology lab.
But if there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it is that there is no obvious destination. Nobody is going to say to me, “Thank you very much, you’ve been a model patient. Now toddle along on your merry way. You are cured.” Once you’ve entered the cancer building, you never really leave.
There is a sequence that you need to follow when you get on this merry go round. Ultrasounds, blood tests, surgery, CAT scans and more blood tests. It’s a familiar story to those that have waited in corridors for news of relatives and friends but it’s a world that was unknown to me until three weeks ago.
I now have lots of relatives and friends anxious to hear news of me. And I can’t help feeling that it’s actually worse for them. They are helpless and impotent. They want to do something, but apart from the occasional joke to keep my spirits up, there is not much they can do.
I, on the other hand, just have to lie back and let the doctors do their thing to me. My only job is to design a strategy to win the war that my own body has declared on me.
I’ve gone through all the emotions from denial (it’s not a lump, it’s just the way I’m sitting) to despair (why me, when I was just about to embark on my dream career as a porn star) to anger (how could you do this to me body, after I bathed you once a week whether you needed it or not).
The doctors are looking after my physical recovery, although their advice could be distilled into a single message, “wear tighter underpants!” But it is my job to manage the mental recovery.
I think it was Freud who said that our biggest battle in life is with ourselves. I’m not sure, but I know that Tony Soprano said “we are our own worst enemies”. And that’s never truer than when you are touched by cancer. This isn’t a virus that I developed after being with someone I shouldn’t have or an infection I picked up after exposure to dodgy flies or insects. This is something my own body did to me, the ungrateful pup. And the response will have to come from me.
There are some upsides of course. I’ve managed to get down to the target weight that I’ve longed for these past fifteen years. I’ve also been banished to the sofa for a couple of weeks which has allowed me to catch up on all those DVDs that I’ve been hoarding. And what has this taught me? Woody Allen is no longer as funny as he once was and Pedro Almodavar is a sick Spaniard.
My home confinement has also coincided with coverage of the Commonwealth Games. I’m a sports fanatic but any competition that is weak enough to allow Jersey to win medals does not appeal to me. Australia takes the games seriously for reasons that are beyond me. The coverage is so one eyed that it makes English commentary on the World Cup sound like the enlightened prayers of Buddhist Monks.
I have to confess that I’m a poor patient. I used to dream of being able to lie on my back and watch any DVD I choose. But it truth, it becomes pretty boring after a few days and I realise now that I’m a social animal who craves conversation and the opportunity to make people laugh.
But one thing people keep saying to me is that positive thought is the most important thing at the moment. So I’m treating this like a second life. An opportunity to start again and to leave behind all the anxieties I used to have (to be honest, they all seem insignificant now anyhow) and to embrace life.
So I’ll be doing that over the coming weeks while I wait on word from the doctors on what my follow up treatment will be. I’ll be telling the people I love that I love them. I’ll be savouring the freshness of hops in a cold beer. I’ll be licking the side of the ice cream bowl and crying when I see Chilean miners emerge from seventy days trapped in the bowels of the earth. I will re embrace all those emotions I chose to bottle up these past twenty years while I worried about superficial things like careers, property prices and whether my belly looked big in my favourite t-shirt.
This is a chance to start again. To see the world in a new light and I want to embrace it with both arms. Because at least I still have two of those.
I’m still not out the woods but at least I can see the clearing ahead. I have to see the specialist on Wednesday for the results of my last blood test. No doubt there will be some treatment after that. Much of this journey is about waiting for appointments, for tests or for your body to do its thing and settle down. But I take heart from those Chilean miners. They have shown us that waiting can be worthwhile if it brings redemption and a chance for a second life.
I am buried in a dark hole at the moment but I can hear the rescue shaft being dug and I know that I will shortly breathe clean air again.
I got good news during the week, which I guess is relative in the current circumstances. There is no indication that the cancer has spread beyond the tumour that now sits in a jar in some suburban pathology lab.
But if there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it is that there is no obvious destination. Nobody is going to say to me, “Thank you very much, you’ve been a model patient. Now toddle along on your merry way. You are cured.” Once you’ve entered the cancer building, you never really leave.
There is a sequence that you need to follow when you get on this merry go round. Ultrasounds, blood tests, surgery, CAT scans and more blood tests. It’s a familiar story to those that have waited in corridors for news of relatives and friends but it’s a world that was unknown to me until three weeks ago.
I now have lots of relatives and friends anxious to hear news of me. And I can’t help feeling that it’s actually worse for them. They are helpless and impotent. They want to do something, but apart from the occasional joke to keep my spirits up, there is not much they can do.
I, on the other hand, just have to lie back and let the doctors do their thing to me. My only job is to design a strategy to win the war that my own body has declared on me.
I’ve gone through all the emotions from denial (it’s not a lump, it’s just the way I’m sitting) to despair (why me, when I was just about to embark on my dream career as a porn star) to anger (how could you do this to me body, after I bathed you once a week whether you needed it or not).
The doctors are looking after my physical recovery, although their advice could be distilled into a single message, “wear tighter underpants!” But it is my job to manage the mental recovery.
I think it was Freud who said that our biggest battle in life is with ourselves. I’m not sure, but I know that Tony Soprano said “we are our own worst enemies”. And that’s never truer than when you are touched by cancer. This isn’t a virus that I developed after being with someone I shouldn’t have or an infection I picked up after exposure to dodgy flies or insects. This is something my own body did to me, the ungrateful pup. And the response will have to come from me.
There are some upsides of course. I’ve managed to get down to the target weight that I’ve longed for these past fifteen years. I’ve also been banished to the sofa for a couple of weeks which has allowed me to catch up on all those DVDs that I’ve been hoarding. And what has this taught me? Woody Allen is no longer as funny as he once was and Pedro Almodavar is a sick Spaniard.
My home confinement has also coincided with coverage of the Commonwealth Games. I’m a sports fanatic but any competition that is weak enough to allow Jersey to win medals does not appeal to me. Australia takes the games seriously for reasons that are beyond me. The coverage is so one eyed that it makes English commentary on the World Cup sound like the enlightened prayers of Buddhist Monks.
I have to confess that I’m a poor patient. I used to dream of being able to lie on my back and watch any DVD I choose. But it truth, it becomes pretty boring after a few days and I realise now that I’m a social animal who craves conversation and the opportunity to make people laugh.
But one thing people keep saying to me is that positive thought is the most important thing at the moment. So I’m treating this like a second life. An opportunity to start again and to leave behind all the anxieties I used to have (to be honest, they all seem insignificant now anyhow) and to embrace life.
So I’ll be doing that over the coming weeks while I wait on word from the doctors on what my follow up treatment will be. I’ll be telling the people I love that I love them. I’ll be savouring the freshness of hops in a cold beer. I’ll be licking the side of the ice cream bowl and crying when I see Chilean miners emerge from seventy days trapped in the bowels of the earth. I will re embrace all those emotions I chose to bottle up these past twenty years while I worried about superficial things like careers, property prices and whether my belly looked big in my favourite t-shirt.
This is a chance to start again. To see the world in a new light and I want to embrace it with both arms. Because at least I still have two of those.
I’m still not out the woods but at least I can see the clearing ahead. I have to see the specialist on Wednesday for the results of my last blood test. No doubt there will be some treatment after that. Much of this journey is about waiting for appointments, for tests or for your body to do its thing and settle down. But I take heart from those Chilean miners. They have shown us that waiting can be worthwhile if it brings redemption and a chance for a second life.
I am buried in a dark hole at the moment but I can hear the rescue shaft being dug and I know that I will shortly breathe clean air again.
Friday 1 October 2010
Sailing on the Big C
I watched the epic Grand Final on a big screen in O’Donnell Park in St Kilda, in the happy company of two thousand Saints fans. They played Collingwood in the final and St Kilda was the only place in the City safe from the nasal toned hell of Pies supporters.
The game ended in a draw which is about as rare as a Collingwood fan with a full set of teeth. As soon as the final siren went and the delirium of the crowd was reduced to anti-climatic mutterings, the Gods decided that we had frolicked in the sun for long enough.
As the crowd drifted towards the trams and the welcoming glow of St. Kilda beach hostelries, a great tempest moved in from the bay, hurling sand in its wake and changing the colour of the sky to tar.
“You have tested and tasted too much my friends”, God seemed to say. “Now its time to go home”.
It’s now Friday after the Grand Final (and the day before the replay that has gripped the City’s imagination all week) and I feel like God is passing on the same message to me. About ten days ago I found a lump in a place where men are not supposed to find lumps. I went through the whole gamut of emotions from despair to denial before finally presenting myself to a doctor. I was immediately subjected to indignities involving long needles and a stranger fondling those parts of your body that should be reserved for mothers up to the age of four and after a gap of twelve years or so, girlfriends and wives thereafter. When the doctor kept saying “oh dear, oh dear” I knew something was up.
But despite the ever increasing sense of doom that these procedures induce, there is a strange sense of calm that settles over you once you have handed over responsibility for your care to the professionals.
I’m quite happy now to sit back and be prodded, injected and cut open by a host of medical practitioners. It’s as though it is their problem now and not mine.
That was on Monday and events took on a surreal life of their own thereafter. I had stepped on to the medical rollercoaster and all I could do was hold on and wish for the best. I went for an ultrasound on Monday afternoon where a nice man chatted to me while he ran a warm nozzle over my little fellows. Then his tone changed and I knew that he spotted the fatal flaw. He didn’t want to tell me but I caught a glimpse of the screen and even to my untrained eye, a picture painted a thousand words.
The next stop on the roller coaster was the Urologist, a nice man in an opulent suite in the Freemasons Hospital. In the past, Freemasons were as popular in my Catholic family as the Klu Klux clan but believe me that feels irrelevant when you’re sailing on the stormy waters of the Big C.
He became the third person in two days to have a little fondle. It didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. He sat me and my partner down and calmly explained that in two days time he would be cutting me open like and extracting my left testical. Then he asked if we had any questions.
Looking back I wish I could have thought of something smart to ask. Such as, “what led you into this line of work?” or “Will I get to keep it afterwards”.
But truth be told, I was a mass of confusion and could only mumble out some idiotic enquiries about whether it would hurt or not. Thankfully I had someone with me who could ask the important stuff and between us we managed to come away with a clear idea of what lies ahead.
Then I did what all right thinking Irish people would do in a situation like this. I went out and got drunk. We had a sort of wake for lefty and a promotion ceremony for righty who has agreed to take on sole responsibility in the future now that I am dispensing with the joint CEO model.
Thankfully, I’d sobered up by Thursday morning when the operation was due. I had rarely seen the inside of a hospital theatre before this year. But 2010 is swiftly becoming Annus Horribilus. I am now an expert on the Australian health system and I could probably be trusted with carrying out some simple operations myself at this stage.
The surgeon came to see before they put me to sleep and asked if I minded if a work experience student sat in during the operation. I said it was fine as long as he wasn’t holding a scalpel. It turned out to be a 16 year and I can only assume that he was given the job of holding my Willy while they shaved me. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
I woke up a couple of hours later and felt pretty sore and a little lighter. Lefty must have weighed more than I thought. For such a life changing operation, they don’t waste time. I was out of hospital by 5pm and back on the sofa where I expect to spend a lot of time over the coming days.
While I wait for the wound in my groin to heal, I’m a little bit of limbo. I have to get a CT scan done next week to see if the cancer has spread. There is a good chance it hasn’t as they say that testicular cancer is one of the better ones to get if you are looking for full recovery. Although at the moment that’s like telling me that having one leg cut off is better than two.
I’ll get some more blood tests and then revisit the nice specialist in his opulent suite in two weeks. He will tell me which fork my life will take from here on. I hope it’s not the one less taken.
The game ended in a draw which is about as rare as a Collingwood fan with a full set of teeth. As soon as the final siren went and the delirium of the crowd was reduced to anti-climatic mutterings, the Gods decided that we had frolicked in the sun for long enough.
As the crowd drifted towards the trams and the welcoming glow of St. Kilda beach hostelries, a great tempest moved in from the bay, hurling sand in its wake and changing the colour of the sky to tar.
“You have tested and tasted too much my friends”, God seemed to say. “Now its time to go home”.
It’s now Friday after the Grand Final (and the day before the replay that has gripped the City’s imagination all week) and I feel like God is passing on the same message to me. About ten days ago I found a lump in a place where men are not supposed to find lumps. I went through the whole gamut of emotions from despair to denial before finally presenting myself to a doctor. I was immediately subjected to indignities involving long needles and a stranger fondling those parts of your body that should be reserved for mothers up to the age of four and after a gap of twelve years or so, girlfriends and wives thereafter. When the doctor kept saying “oh dear, oh dear” I knew something was up.
But despite the ever increasing sense of doom that these procedures induce, there is a strange sense of calm that settles over you once you have handed over responsibility for your care to the professionals.
I’m quite happy now to sit back and be prodded, injected and cut open by a host of medical practitioners. It’s as though it is their problem now and not mine.
That was on Monday and events took on a surreal life of their own thereafter. I had stepped on to the medical rollercoaster and all I could do was hold on and wish for the best. I went for an ultrasound on Monday afternoon where a nice man chatted to me while he ran a warm nozzle over my little fellows. Then his tone changed and I knew that he spotted the fatal flaw. He didn’t want to tell me but I caught a glimpse of the screen and even to my untrained eye, a picture painted a thousand words.
The next stop on the roller coaster was the Urologist, a nice man in an opulent suite in the Freemasons Hospital. In the past, Freemasons were as popular in my Catholic family as the Klu Klux clan but believe me that feels irrelevant when you’re sailing on the stormy waters of the Big C.
He became the third person in two days to have a little fondle. It didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. He sat me and my partner down and calmly explained that in two days time he would be cutting me open like and extracting my left testical. Then he asked if we had any questions.
Looking back I wish I could have thought of something smart to ask. Such as, “what led you into this line of work?” or “Will I get to keep it afterwards”.
But truth be told, I was a mass of confusion and could only mumble out some idiotic enquiries about whether it would hurt or not. Thankfully I had someone with me who could ask the important stuff and between us we managed to come away with a clear idea of what lies ahead.
Then I did what all right thinking Irish people would do in a situation like this. I went out and got drunk. We had a sort of wake for lefty and a promotion ceremony for righty who has agreed to take on sole responsibility in the future now that I am dispensing with the joint CEO model.
Thankfully, I’d sobered up by Thursday morning when the operation was due. I had rarely seen the inside of a hospital theatre before this year. But 2010 is swiftly becoming Annus Horribilus. I am now an expert on the Australian health system and I could probably be trusted with carrying out some simple operations myself at this stage.
The surgeon came to see before they put me to sleep and asked if I minded if a work experience student sat in during the operation. I said it was fine as long as he wasn’t holding a scalpel. It turned out to be a 16 year and I can only assume that he was given the job of holding my Willy while they shaved me. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
I woke up a couple of hours later and felt pretty sore and a little lighter. Lefty must have weighed more than I thought. For such a life changing operation, they don’t waste time. I was out of hospital by 5pm and back on the sofa where I expect to spend a lot of time over the coming days.
While I wait for the wound in my groin to heal, I’m a little bit of limbo. I have to get a CT scan done next week to see if the cancer has spread. There is a good chance it hasn’t as they say that testicular cancer is one of the better ones to get if you are looking for full recovery. Although at the moment that’s like telling me that having one leg cut off is better than two.
I’ll get some more blood tests and then revisit the nice specialist in his opulent suite in two weeks. He will tell me which fork my life will take from here on. I hope it’s not the one less taken.
Sunday 19 September 2010
The Two Australias
When I was a young fella back in the 1970’s, it was a thrill to receive a letter in the post. In those innocent times, you always assumed it meant good news, unlike in later years when envelopes carried bills and “Dear John” letters from childhood sweethearts.
It was a general rule in the “good old days” that bad news was delivered by telephone while the post delivered letters from overseas relatives with exotic dollar notes enclosed and scented letters in German from a pen friend you would never meet. This was particularly true in our house, because we didn’t have a telephone and like the rest of the street, we depended on the good grace of Mrs Gray across the road to be our telephonic link to the outside world. Needless to say, we didn’t abuse that gift and used it only for news of family bereavements and hospital appointments. Mrs Gray was a lovely women but she wouldn’t appreciate you spending half an hour in her living room telling your mate about the weather or the celebrity you had spotted the night before.
I learned at an early age however, that letters didn’t come out of the blue. You had to work for them, usually by firing off an initial mail yourself. One fruitful avenue was to write to embassies enquiring as to their country and seeking any information they might have, as though you had just heard of Canada and felt the need to understand it. Embassies seemed to have entire departments focussed on servicing the queries of small boys, because two weeks after my initial query, a large brown envelope would be plopped into our hallway enclosing maps and wall charts.
It was all positive stuff of course, designed to promote their country. The information from the German embassy contained beautiful pictures of the Black Forest or the Munich Beer Festival with no mention of the war or the ugly steel works of the Ruhr Valley. The Americans sent me a wall chart of their National parks but glossed over the Indians who used to live in them, while the Australians showed lots of smiling black Aboriginal faces but kept quiet about the “White Only” only policy that was still in force at the time.
These posters were my childhood window to the wider world and planted a seed of adventure within me that is still growing. Thankfully, I’ve managed to see most of the places depicted in those pictures, even if the reality has been different to my childhood thoughts.
For example, Australia was always depicted as a country of red dirt, kangaroos and suntanned blokes in wide brimmed hats under a clear blue sky. Cities were rarely presented, unless it was a romantic shot of the Sydney Opera House and bridge. You got no sense of what it meant to live in an Australian City or of seasons that differed from high summer.
There is of course another Australia. The country in which most Australians live and where the weather is pretty crap for six months of the year. While many countries have a North/South or City/Country divide, Australia takes this to the extreme. The South East is a different country to elsewhere, particularly Queensland and the Northern Territory, which are as foreign as Cambodia is to Iceland.
When you leave the sophisticated streets of Melbourne to venture north, you do so with the spirit of Phileas Fogg. The first thing you notice is that people wear different clothing. The natives of Queensland wear wide brimmed hats and knee high socks with shorts and look like they are about to audition for a Western movie. The locals in Melbourne wear European clothes because that’s where they think they live. It’s the same with cuisine. Italian, Greek and Lebanese food is the most popular in the South East whereas our cousins in the North like barbecuing their food, particularly if it involves animals found on Australia’s national emblem. They drink fizzy beer with all meals including breakfast, whereas we sip lattes and micro brewery ales.
The biggest difference you’ll notice is in the area of arts and entertainment. The only art you’ll find in any part of Australia beyond the metropolitan cities was painted 400 years ago by indigenous people and probably has a bowling alley built on it now. Sydney and Melbourne on the other hand have galleries displaying the work of 17th Century Masters as well as opera, ballet and theatre. When we want to watch sport, we head down to the MCG or the Sydney Cricket ground for a night of AFL or Rugby. In Queensland they prefer their sports to include animals, such as bulls that don’t want to be ridden by wannabe cowboys, or dwarves that don’t mind being chucked.
I guess the easiest way to describe the difference between these ‘two countries within a country’ is that one half takes its inspiration from Europe whereas the other looks to the worst excesses of the United States. This can be seen in all its ghastly glory along the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane. It boasts a Miami Beach clone in Surfers Paradise and a gaudy collection of theme parks designed to separate fools from their money. They also have all year round sun and beaches and so attract tourists from the more sophisticated parts of Australia, who dine off fried fast food for a week before returning to their normal routine of salads and almond croissants.
These two Australia’s exist in relative harmony with each other because each of them tries to pretend that the other doesn’t exist. Occasionally however, that harmony is shattered by the realisation that the other side is gaining the upper hand. The recent election is a good example. City Australia likes to think that they run the country and the political class is heavily Sydney and Melbourne based. This election, however, threw up a hung parliament which left the balance of power in the hands of three rural independents with views that made posh Melbournians choke on their lattes.
Their mission is to create “One Australia”. I suspect they will have the opposite affect and in a few years Queensland will split from the rest of the country and rename itself “New Las Vegas”. And afterwards, small Irish boys will have to write to two embassies to get pictures of kangaroos and the Sydney Opera House.
It was a general rule in the “good old days” that bad news was delivered by telephone while the post delivered letters from overseas relatives with exotic dollar notes enclosed and scented letters in German from a pen friend you would never meet. This was particularly true in our house, because we didn’t have a telephone and like the rest of the street, we depended on the good grace of Mrs Gray across the road to be our telephonic link to the outside world. Needless to say, we didn’t abuse that gift and used it only for news of family bereavements and hospital appointments. Mrs Gray was a lovely women but she wouldn’t appreciate you spending half an hour in her living room telling your mate about the weather or the celebrity you had spotted the night before.
I learned at an early age however, that letters didn’t come out of the blue. You had to work for them, usually by firing off an initial mail yourself. One fruitful avenue was to write to embassies enquiring as to their country and seeking any information they might have, as though you had just heard of Canada and felt the need to understand it. Embassies seemed to have entire departments focussed on servicing the queries of small boys, because two weeks after my initial query, a large brown envelope would be plopped into our hallway enclosing maps and wall charts.
It was all positive stuff of course, designed to promote their country. The information from the German embassy contained beautiful pictures of the Black Forest or the Munich Beer Festival with no mention of the war or the ugly steel works of the Ruhr Valley. The Americans sent me a wall chart of their National parks but glossed over the Indians who used to live in them, while the Australians showed lots of smiling black Aboriginal faces but kept quiet about the “White Only” only policy that was still in force at the time.
These posters were my childhood window to the wider world and planted a seed of adventure within me that is still growing. Thankfully, I’ve managed to see most of the places depicted in those pictures, even if the reality has been different to my childhood thoughts.
For example, Australia was always depicted as a country of red dirt, kangaroos and suntanned blokes in wide brimmed hats under a clear blue sky. Cities were rarely presented, unless it was a romantic shot of the Sydney Opera House and bridge. You got no sense of what it meant to live in an Australian City or of seasons that differed from high summer.
There is of course another Australia. The country in which most Australians live and where the weather is pretty crap for six months of the year. While many countries have a North/South or City/Country divide, Australia takes this to the extreme. The South East is a different country to elsewhere, particularly Queensland and the Northern Territory, which are as foreign as Cambodia is to Iceland.
When you leave the sophisticated streets of Melbourne to venture north, you do so with the spirit of Phileas Fogg. The first thing you notice is that people wear different clothing. The natives of Queensland wear wide brimmed hats and knee high socks with shorts and look like they are about to audition for a Western movie. The locals in Melbourne wear European clothes because that’s where they think they live. It’s the same with cuisine. Italian, Greek and Lebanese food is the most popular in the South East whereas our cousins in the North like barbecuing their food, particularly if it involves animals found on Australia’s national emblem. They drink fizzy beer with all meals including breakfast, whereas we sip lattes and micro brewery ales.
The biggest difference you’ll notice is in the area of arts and entertainment. The only art you’ll find in any part of Australia beyond the metropolitan cities was painted 400 years ago by indigenous people and probably has a bowling alley built on it now. Sydney and Melbourne on the other hand have galleries displaying the work of 17th Century Masters as well as opera, ballet and theatre. When we want to watch sport, we head down to the MCG or the Sydney Cricket ground for a night of AFL or Rugby. In Queensland they prefer their sports to include animals, such as bulls that don’t want to be ridden by wannabe cowboys, or dwarves that don’t mind being chucked.
I guess the easiest way to describe the difference between these ‘two countries within a country’ is that one half takes its inspiration from Europe whereas the other looks to the worst excesses of the United States. This can be seen in all its ghastly glory along the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane. It boasts a Miami Beach clone in Surfers Paradise and a gaudy collection of theme parks designed to separate fools from their money. They also have all year round sun and beaches and so attract tourists from the more sophisticated parts of Australia, who dine off fried fast food for a week before returning to their normal routine of salads and almond croissants.
These two Australia’s exist in relative harmony with each other because each of them tries to pretend that the other doesn’t exist. Occasionally however, that harmony is shattered by the realisation that the other side is gaining the upper hand. The recent election is a good example. City Australia likes to think that they run the country and the political class is heavily Sydney and Melbourne based. This election, however, threw up a hung parliament which left the balance of power in the hands of three rural independents with views that made posh Melbournians choke on their lattes.
Their mission is to create “One Australia”. I suspect they will have the opposite affect and in a few years Queensland will split from the rest of the country and rename itself “New Las Vegas”. And afterwards, small Irish boys will have to write to two embassies to get pictures of kangaroos and the Sydney Opera House.
Sunday 12 September 2010
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Close your eyes for a second and imagine that you are sitting in a warm, dark room. All you can hear is the incessant dripping of water from far away and the slow monotonous sound of feet shuffling. Then imagine that you’ve just received word that it will be like that for at least the next 100 days.
That’s the hell that 33 miners are currently living through. Trapped 700 metres below the surface of the San Jose mine in Chile, they must wait for the rescuers to come. And they won’t be coming anytime soon.
Spare a thought for Carlos Mamani in particular. He’s the only non Chilean down there and must be the butt of many “A Bolivian walked into a bar” jokes by now.
Perhaps it’s just me, but Irish people seem to revel in stories from far flung places involving boys trapped down wells, astronauts floating in an airless capsule, or miners huddled in an underground chamber after a rock fall.
We have led the rush to places like California, South Africa and Victoria whenever a whiff of gold was in the air. One place we didn’t make it to was Chile. While it seems that every earthquake in Sumatra and bus crash in the Philippines has to involve at least one Irish backpacker, it’s safe to say that none of them are among the 33 unfortunate men currently trapped in the bowels of a deep and dark mine.
I can’t help feeling some of their pain when watching news reports of their plight and imagining how I would feel in the same situation. I don’t feel like this when I look at reports on oil spills in the Caribbean or airplane crashes in Russia. Mining disasters like this are different. They offer the immediate shock of a catastrophe and the possibility of redemption. News will be delivered breathlessly each night of progress and unlike most news stories; people trapped down mines who survive the initial accident are normally pulled out alive.
In the meantime, the media keeps us updated on their phone calls and video links with relatives, which just goes to show that mining disasters are staying up with the times. No doubt one of them will open a twitter account and keep us informed in 140 word tit bits such as “Went to bed last night and it was pitch dark and woke up this morning and it was the same. When is Spring due?” or “Is it hot down here because we’re closer to hell?”
The fact that they have MP3 players and video links is fantastic. But it does make you wonder how we could put a man on the moon in 1969 but it takes four months to dig a hole in the ground. In the last forty years, technology has moved on apace with digital TV, the Internet and mobile phones. But engineering is still where it was in the 1960’s. Those guys will have to wait for months to be rescued but the information hungry world can be fed with electronic feeds from the depths of the world on a daily basis.
Information is the drug of the 21st Century. We need GPS gadgets in our cars to get us to the same shopping centre we’ve been to for the last ten years. Mobile phones to tell our partners we are on the tram, even though we make the same trip at the same time each day and Twitter to tell the world when we’ve been to the toilet or found a large and unexpected bogie.
But as Leo in the West Wing said, technology developments in the last forty years are designed to deliver a more efficient method for the transmission of pornography and gossip. Some of which one presumes is being fed to the miners as we speak.
As a blog writer, I’m probably being hypocritical in this condemnation of modern technology. I text and email for example but draw the line at social networking or internet technology that involves more than checking out the Irish Times and the BBC. This is probably a generational thing. I was one of the first people in my peer group to have an email address and I treat that medium with the ease and efficiency that 12 years olds have for downloading illegal movies.
And as for mobile phones, I upgraded to predictive text a few years ago but draw the line at including smiley faces and I’m illiterate in the fine art of “text speak”.
Now we live in an era of IPads and wireless internet on mobile phones. I see people on the tram watching movies on screens the size of postage stamps and shake my head. I see them reading novels on Ipads and think “would it not be easier to buy a book and certainly a lot less hassle if it got wet or you lost it”.
If they can use these resources to entertain and inform those unfortunate Chilean miners, it will be worthwhile. But they should be careful about going too far.
Yesterday for example, they sent down a miniature TV set and allowed the guys to watch Chile play the Ukraine in Kiev. It’s not clear how the 2-1 defeat affected their spirits or whether Senor Mamani from Bolivia felt excluded from the process. Hopefully Chile doesn’t play Bolivia in the next 100 days or we could be looking at the first example of subterranean football hooliganism and I wouldn’t fancy Carlos’s chance of winning that argument.
Psychologists have been helping them deal with the stress of their confinement. But it’s not clear if this includes advice on how to deal with disputes that will arise when all 33 guys argue over the TV remote control. Imagine if the History channel was showing a documentary on the hunt for Nazi war criminals and Discovery had a show on killer sharks? At least there are an odd number of them and a majority will always arise. Unless the first decision of their community was that Bolivians don’t get a vote!
That’s the hell that 33 miners are currently living through. Trapped 700 metres below the surface of the San Jose mine in Chile, they must wait for the rescuers to come. And they won’t be coming anytime soon.
Spare a thought for Carlos Mamani in particular. He’s the only non Chilean down there and must be the butt of many “A Bolivian walked into a bar” jokes by now.
Perhaps it’s just me, but Irish people seem to revel in stories from far flung places involving boys trapped down wells, astronauts floating in an airless capsule, or miners huddled in an underground chamber after a rock fall.
We have led the rush to places like California, South Africa and Victoria whenever a whiff of gold was in the air. One place we didn’t make it to was Chile. While it seems that every earthquake in Sumatra and bus crash in the Philippines has to involve at least one Irish backpacker, it’s safe to say that none of them are among the 33 unfortunate men currently trapped in the bowels of a deep and dark mine.
I can’t help feeling some of their pain when watching news reports of their plight and imagining how I would feel in the same situation. I don’t feel like this when I look at reports on oil spills in the Caribbean or airplane crashes in Russia. Mining disasters like this are different. They offer the immediate shock of a catastrophe and the possibility of redemption. News will be delivered breathlessly each night of progress and unlike most news stories; people trapped down mines who survive the initial accident are normally pulled out alive.
In the meantime, the media keeps us updated on their phone calls and video links with relatives, which just goes to show that mining disasters are staying up with the times. No doubt one of them will open a twitter account and keep us informed in 140 word tit bits such as “Went to bed last night and it was pitch dark and woke up this morning and it was the same. When is Spring due?” or “Is it hot down here because we’re closer to hell?”
The fact that they have MP3 players and video links is fantastic. But it does make you wonder how we could put a man on the moon in 1969 but it takes four months to dig a hole in the ground. In the last forty years, technology has moved on apace with digital TV, the Internet and mobile phones. But engineering is still where it was in the 1960’s. Those guys will have to wait for months to be rescued but the information hungry world can be fed with electronic feeds from the depths of the world on a daily basis.
Information is the drug of the 21st Century. We need GPS gadgets in our cars to get us to the same shopping centre we’ve been to for the last ten years. Mobile phones to tell our partners we are on the tram, even though we make the same trip at the same time each day and Twitter to tell the world when we’ve been to the toilet or found a large and unexpected bogie.
But as Leo in the West Wing said, technology developments in the last forty years are designed to deliver a more efficient method for the transmission of pornography and gossip. Some of which one presumes is being fed to the miners as we speak.
As a blog writer, I’m probably being hypocritical in this condemnation of modern technology. I text and email for example but draw the line at social networking or internet technology that involves more than checking out the Irish Times and the BBC. This is probably a generational thing. I was one of the first people in my peer group to have an email address and I treat that medium with the ease and efficiency that 12 years olds have for downloading illegal movies.
And as for mobile phones, I upgraded to predictive text a few years ago but draw the line at including smiley faces and I’m illiterate in the fine art of “text speak”.
Now we live in an era of IPads and wireless internet on mobile phones. I see people on the tram watching movies on screens the size of postage stamps and shake my head. I see them reading novels on Ipads and think “would it not be easier to buy a book and certainly a lot less hassle if it got wet or you lost it”.
If they can use these resources to entertain and inform those unfortunate Chilean miners, it will be worthwhile. But they should be careful about going too far.
Yesterday for example, they sent down a miniature TV set and allowed the guys to watch Chile play the Ukraine in Kiev. It’s not clear how the 2-1 defeat affected their spirits or whether Senor Mamani from Bolivia felt excluded from the process. Hopefully Chile doesn’t play Bolivia in the next 100 days or we could be looking at the first example of subterranean football hooliganism and I wouldn’t fancy Carlos’s chance of winning that argument.
Psychologists have been helping them deal with the stress of their confinement. But it’s not clear if this includes advice on how to deal with disputes that will arise when all 33 guys argue over the TV remote control. Imagine if the History channel was showing a documentary on the hunt for Nazi war criminals and Discovery had a show on killer sharks? At least there are an odd number of them and a majority will always arise. Unless the first decision of their community was that Bolivians don’t get a vote!
Friday 3 September 2010
A Tale of Bank Robbers
Regular readers may have noticed that I use this blog to try out different writing styles, from self deprecatory humour to in depth analysis of current affairs. This is designed to give me an escape from the drudgery of my daily existence and train me for my future career as Ireland’s next Roddy Doyle. Or more likely, the world’s next Enid Blyton.
Today I want to delve into the world of financial journalism, in the knowledge that this will bore the socks off most of my regular readers. But it is a subject close to my heart and gives me an opportunity to satisfy one of the other purposes of this blog - to get things off my chest.
I want to talk about Anglo Irish Bank and what the people of Ireland should do about it. Anglo (which means “English” but we won’t go there) is a merchant bank with about 400 staff and a debt that would put an African dictator to shame. During Ireland’s boom years, Anglo was the poster boy of the financial industry. They borrowed money from bondholders and the European Central bank (ECB) and loaned it to developers to fuel the property boom. Now that the property market has crashed, Anglo is as insolvent as the last person holding tulips during the Dutch mania of the 17th Century.
There is now a debate as to what should happen to Anglo. Should it be allowed to go bust, or as the Irish Government proposes, should it be kept alive by tax payer investment?
I should nail my colours to the mast first. I work for a bank that would have gone bust but for a Government bail-out and I’m a dyed in the wool Socialist who questions the whole premise of Neo-Liberal Capitalism. But I’ll try to be as dispassionate as possible.
Banks aren’t like normal companies. They are so embedded into the overall economy that we need to give banks some wriggle room during recessions but can’t allow them to lose the run of themselves either. They are supposed to have a large Capital base which would protect them from the slings and arrows of economic downturns. And they are supposed to have lending limits (max 85% loans etc) and diversified lending so that they don’t have exposure to a single sector (like construction). This would allow them to absorb bad debts in a particular sector while making money elsewhere - the old argument that shops should sell umbrellas and ice cream.
Now think about what happened in Ireland. They allowed banks to lower their capital base because they were able to borrow unlimited funds from the ECB and Bondholders. Lax regulation allowed the banks to lend to anybody, regardless of credit status, to give 100% loans and to concentrate this on one sector (Property Development). When the property bubble collapsed, it took the whole house of cards with it.
Ireland now has banks with an over-reliance on International markets for funding because they outgrew the domestic deposit base by chasing asset growth. These markets leant to Anglo, but also to retail banks like AIB and BOI who also chased the same drug of cheap credit.
So that’s where we are. But the bigger question is how do we get out of this mess? The normal arguments for protecting banks from going bust are that:
1. They employ a lot of people.
2. Banks lend to Mams and Dads and hold deposits from little old ladies.
3. Allowing a bank to go bust spooks the International Markets and would make it difficult or expensive for other banks in that market to borrow funds. This is the Law of Unexpected Consequences.
In the case of Anglo, I don’t buy the first two arguments above. It employs hardly anyone and some may say that those that are there are partly culpable for the mess the company got into in the first place. It doesn’t have a deposit base among ordinary people. In fact it hardly has a deposit base at all. And it only lends to developers who attract as much sympathy in the general public as tax collectors..
There are two arguments for saving Anglo which might apply. Developers went crazy over the last ten years building ghost estates, multi storey car parks in small rural towns and showpiece vanity projects along Dublin’s quays. For the big stuff, they borrowed from Anglo and for the smaller stuff they borrowed from AIB and BOI.
The Government argues that if Anglo goes bust, it will bring down all the developers on its books at the same time. These developers as I mentioned above are also large borrowers from AIB and BOI. The argument is that if they go bust they could bring those domestic banks with them.
You could also argue that if Anglo goes bust, it will spook the International markets and AIB and BOI will find it impossible to borrow and the economy will grind to a halt.
In reality, if developers go bust, it will put pressure on AIB and BOI but it would be cheaper for the Government to lend money to these banks than it will cost them to bail out Anglo.
And as for International Markets and Bondholders, if they get burned, they’ll moan for a while but pretty soon they’ll be back if they think there is money to be made. And what harm is it if this disaster teaches the international markets to be more cautious in the future?
So who pays? I think it would have been better to let Anglo go bust, which would screw their bond holders. This might result in most Irish developers going bust, which is no bad thing either as they would be forced to sell all those helicopters and speed boats. This will have a knock effect on AIB and BOI, but the government can apply its help there and not at the top end.
The other option is to follow the government’s approach. Protect the markets and international bond holders and saddle the Irish people with a huge burden for the next twenty years. Is that the Ireland that we want?
Today I want to delve into the world of financial journalism, in the knowledge that this will bore the socks off most of my regular readers. But it is a subject close to my heart and gives me an opportunity to satisfy one of the other purposes of this blog - to get things off my chest.
I want to talk about Anglo Irish Bank and what the people of Ireland should do about it. Anglo (which means “English” but we won’t go there) is a merchant bank with about 400 staff and a debt that would put an African dictator to shame. During Ireland’s boom years, Anglo was the poster boy of the financial industry. They borrowed money from bondholders and the European Central bank (ECB) and loaned it to developers to fuel the property boom. Now that the property market has crashed, Anglo is as insolvent as the last person holding tulips during the Dutch mania of the 17th Century.
There is now a debate as to what should happen to Anglo. Should it be allowed to go bust, or as the Irish Government proposes, should it be kept alive by tax payer investment?
I should nail my colours to the mast first. I work for a bank that would have gone bust but for a Government bail-out and I’m a dyed in the wool Socialist who questions the whole premise of Neo-Liberal Capitalism. But I’ll try to be as dispassionate as possible.
Banks aren’t like normal companies. They are so embedded into the overall economy that we need to give banks some wriggle room during recessions but can’t allow them to lose the run of themselves either. They are supposed to have a large Capital base which would protect them from the slings and arrows of economic downturns. And they are supposed to have lending limits (max 85% loans etc) and diversified lending so that they don’t have exposure to a single sector (like construction). This would allow them to absorb bad debts in a particular sector while making money elsewhere - the old argument that shops should sell umbrellas and ice cream.
Now think about what happened in Ireland. They allowed banks to lower their capital base because they were able to borrow unlimited funds from the ECB and Bondholders. Lax regulation allowed the banks to lend to anybody, regardless of credit status, to give 100% loans and to concentrate this on one sector (Property Development). When the property bubble collapsed, it took the whole house of cards with it.
Ireland now has banks with an over-reliance on International markets for funding because they outgrew the domestic deposit base by chasing asset growth. These markets leant to Anglo, but also to retail banks like AIB and BOI who also chased the same drug of cheap credit.
So that’s where we are. But the bigger question is how do we get out of this mess? The normal arguments for protecting banks from going bust are that:
1. They employ a lot of people.
2. Banks lend to Mams and Dads and hold deposits from little old ladies.
3. Allowing a bank to go bust spooks the International Markets and would make it difficult or expensive for other banks in that market to borrow funds. This is the Law of Unexpected Consequences.
In the case of Anglo, I don’t buy the first two arguments above. It employs hardly anyone and some may say that those that are there are partly culpable for the mess the company got into in the first place. It doesn’t have a deposit base among ordinary people. In fact it hardly has a deposit base at all. And it only lends to developers who attract as much sympathy in the general public as tax collectors..
There are two arguments for saving Anglo which might apply. Developers went crazy over the last ten years building ghost estates, multi storey car parks in small rural towns and showpiece vanity projects along Dublin’s quays. For the big stuff, they borrowed from Anglo and for the smaller stuff they borrowed from AIB and BOI.
The Government argues that if Anglo goes bust, it will bring down all the developers on its books at the same time. These developers as I mentioned above are also large borrowers from AIB and BOI. The argument is that if they go bust they could bring those domestic banks with them.
You could also argue that if Anglo goes bust, it will spook the International markets and AIB and BOI will find it impossible to borrow and the economy will grind to a halt.
In reality, if developers go bust, it will put pressure on AIB and BOI but it would be cheaper for the Government to lend money to these banks than it will cost them to bail out Anglo.
And as for International Markets and Bondholders, if they get burned, they’ll moan for a while but pretty soon they’ll be back if they think there is money to be made. And what harm is it if this disaster teaches the international markets to be more cautious in the future?
So who pays? I think it would have been better to let Anglo go bust, which would screw their bond holders. This might result in most Irish developers going bust, which is no bad thing either as they would be forced to sell all those helicopters and speed boats. This will have a knock effect on AIB and BOI, but the government can apply its help there and not at the top end.
The other option is to follow the government’s approach. Protect the markets and international bond holders and saddle the Irish people with a huge burden for the next twenty years. Is that the Ireland that we want?
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Post Election Blues
Voting is obligatory in Australia, which is just as well. Because the policies offered by the two main parties are so weak and illogical that I’d wager that most people wouldn’t bother voting if they didn’t have to.
I’ve heard the parties here being described as being similar to two big department stores (Myer and David Jones in the Australian context). The both sell the same things and constantly have a sale on. To labour a simile, I’d say they both package things up that are a disappointment when you get them home.
On one side you have the Liberals who aren’t really liberal at all. They are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun and the rantings of their lug eared leader make Margaret Thatcher look like Mother Theresa. The highlight of their campaign was to “Stop the Boats” as though a Spanish Armada was en route to the Australian coast rather than the occasional rickety fishing boat filled with desperate Afghanis. Australia is willing to spend billions on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan but is not willing to spend a fraction of this amount helping the unfortunate victims of that conflict.
However, their opponents in the Labor Party are not able to make capital out of this issue as the only difference between them and the Liberals is that Labor wants to send the boat people to East Timor, whereas the Liberals chosen destination is Nauru. East Timor is an expert on refugees of course, although mainly in the export of them. The Liberals have chosen Nauru because it’s one of the few countries in the world that has not signed the United Nations convention on refugees. Thus Australia, which is a signatory, would be able to sidestep its legal and moral responsibilities.
And the very fact that hardly anyone has mentioned this moral bankruptcy in the course of the election campaign is as good an indication as any of the hollowness of current Australian politics.
Labor, as I mention above, don’t have the moral high ground. They have also betrayed their working class roots and are now a party focused on protecting powerful interest groups. They even spell their name in the American way and not the traditional British/Irish way of “Labour”. They say this is because of their roots in the Victorian mining boom of the 19th Century. Californian immigrants brought an American tradition of Trade Unionism and the Labor Party was born.
Yet I’m inclined to think that they owe their spelling to their devotion to American politics with its concentration on Presidential figures and policies aimed at their biggest donors. I have lived under a Labor/Labour government for the first time in my life these past three years, but I have to say it has been a disappointment. They kept the country out of the global recession and made some symbolic gestures rather than addressing endemic poverty of the indigenous people. But in getting rid of their leader three months ago, they showed that they are as power hungry as their opponents. Government for the sake of it, rather than Government for the people seems to be their motto.
As I can’t vote in elections here, I’ve taken it upon myself to question those who can about the intricacies of the Australian voting system. Sadly I haven’t found anyone who is up to this task. While voting is obligatory, understanding the process isn’t.
As a result, people stand outside election booths handing out “how to vote cards” which sounds like the sort of thing that Stalin used to do. The reason for this is that Australians are obliged to complete a preference for every candidate, even when 30 or so are standing. This adds nothing to the election result but allows election nerds (of which I confess to being a paid up member) to calculate a “two party preferred” vote. God help them if the Greens ever make the breakthrough and become a viable third party. Australia may have to come up with the world’s first three dimensional voting card.
The senate election is particularly strange, as people vote for it on the same day. It makes you wonder why they don’t just have one house. It should be said in their defence that at least they allow people to vote in this election, unlike in Britain where the practice is typically to inherit a seat in the House of Lords, passed down from your ancestor who acted as muscle for Oliver Cromwell. Alternatively, you are gifted a seat by the Prime Minister or you happen to be a Protestant Bishop. This in a country that pretends to be multi cultural and lectures Ireland on its Priest influenced culture.
We Irish aren’t much better mind you. We have an Upper House or Senate which performs a function that is about as clear to the public as the monthly management meetings at Al Qaeda. The election process to this house was determined in the 1930s when the world, it is fair to say, had a casual attitude towards democracy. The founding fathers wanted a virtuous assembly of artists and professors who would sit in patrician judgement over the foolish and uneducated laws passed by the lower house.
We Irish must be the only people in the world who elect artists to our parliament as a matter of constitutional law and allow University graduates to vote in Senate elections, but not factory workers. Democracy, as Winston Churchill said is the least bad form of Government.
After all the votes have been counted in Australia, the result is unclear. The two main parties have finished with exactly the same number of seats, which is sweetly ironic given their identical policies and campaign strategies. Thus, they are both now engaged in that strange courtship ritual peculiar to hung parliaments. Both parties are busy trying to charm the same Greens and Independents that they spent the last six weeks attacking in the campaign.
Soon it will all be settled and we can return to having the civil servants run the country. Nauru or East Timor will get richer but pretty much everything else will stay the same.
I’ve heard the parties here being described as being similar to two big department stores (Myer and David Jones in the Australian context). The both sell the same things and constantly have a sale on. To labour a simile, I’d say they both package things up that are a disappointment when you get them home.
On one side you have the Liberals who aren’t really liberal at all. They are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun and the rantings of their lug eared leader make Margaret Thatcher look like Mother Theresa. The highlight of their campaign was to “Stop the Boats” as though a Spanish Armada was en route to the Australian coast rather than the occasional rickety fishing boat filled with desperate Afghanis. Australia is willing to spend billions on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan but is not willing to spend a fraction of this amount helping the unfortunate victims of that conflict.
However, their opponents in the Labor Party are not able to make capital out of this issue as the only difference between them and the Liberals is that Labor wants to send the boat people to East Timor, whereas the Liberals chosen destination is Nauru. East Timor is an expert on refugees of course, although mainly in the export of them. The Liberals have chosen Nauru because it’s one of the few countries in the world that has not signed the United Nations convention on refugees. Thus Australia, which is a signatory, would be able to sidestep its legal and moral responsibilities.
And the very fact that hardly anyone has mentioned this moral bankruptcy in the course of the election campaign is as good an indication as any of the hollowness of current Australian politics.
Labor, as I mention above, don’t have the moral high ground. They have also betrayed their working class roots and are now a party focused on protecting powerful interest groups. They even spell their name in the American way and not the traditional British/Irish way of “Labour”. They say this is because of their roots in the Victorian mining boom of the 19th Century. Californian immigrants brought an American tradition of Trade Unionism and the Labor Party was born.
Yet I’m inclined to think that they owe their spelling to their devotion to American politics with its concentration on Presidential figures and policies aimed at their biggest donors. I have lived under a Labor/Labour government for the first time in my life these past three years, but I have to say it has been a disappointment. They kept the country out of the global recession and made some symbolic gestures rather than addressing endemic poverty of the indigenous people. But in getting rid of their leader three months ago, they showed that they are as power hungry as their opponents. Government for the sake of it, rather than Government for the people seems to be their motto.
As I can’t vote in elections here, I’ve taken it upon myself to question those who can about the intricacies of the Australian voting system. Sadly I haven’t found anyone who is up to this task. While voting is obligatory, understanding the process isn’t.
As a result, people stand outside election booths handing out “how to vote cards” which sounds like the sort of thing that Stalin used to do. The reason for this is that Australians are obliged to complete a preference for every candidate, even when 30 or so are standing. This adds nothing to the election result but allows election nerds (of which I confess to being a paid up member) to calculate a “two party preferred” vote. God help them if the Greens ever make the breakthrough and become a viable third party. Australia may have to come up with the world’s first three dimensional voting card.
The senate election is particularly strange, as people vote for it on the same day. It makes you wonder why they don’t just have one house. It should be said in their defence that at least they allow people to vote in this election, unlike in Britain where the practice is typically to inherit a seat in the House of Lords, passed down from your ancestor who acted as muscle for Oliver Cromwell. Alternatively, you are gifted a seat by the Prime Minister or you happen to be a Protestant Bishop. This in a country that pretends to be multi cultural and lectures Ireland on its Priest influenced culture.
We Irish aren’t much better mind you. We have an Upper House or Senate which performs a function that is about as clear to the public as the monthly management meetings at Al Qaeda. The election process to this house was determined in the 1930s when the world, it is fair to say, had a casual attitude towards democracy. The founding fathers wanted a virtuous assembly of artists and professors who would sit in patrician judgement over the foolish and uneducated laws passed by the lower house.
We Irish must be the only people in the world who elect artists to our parliament as a matter of constitutional law and allow University graduates to vote in Senate elections, but not factory workers. Democracy, as Winston Churchill said is the least bad form of Government.
After all the votes have been counted in Australia, the result is unclear. The two main parties have finished with exactly the same number of seats, which is sweetly ironic given their identical policies and campaign strategies. Thus, they are both now engaged in that strange courtship ritual peculiar to hung parliaments. Both parties are busy trying to charm the same Greens and Independents that they spent the last six weeks attacking in the campaign.
Soon it will all be settled and we can return to having the civil servants run the country. Nauru or East Timor will get richer but pretty much everything else will stay the same.
Monday 2 August 2010
In Memory of my Mother
Dear Mam,
You’re at rest now and the memory thief can no longer burgle your thoughts. I’d like to think that you are in a better place but to be honest, the hand of fate that God dealt you these past few years has tested my faith. All your obituaries spoke about your daily Mass attendance and unquestioning devotion. I’m not so sure about the unquestioning bit, but you weren’t rewarded for making that daily pilgrimage to St. Malacys.
You would tell me of course that your reward will be in heaven and no doubt you’re up there now telling the big fellow that he’s sitting in your chair. What those obituaries don’t say of course is that you always had questions about the doctrine we were forced to ingest in the old Ireland of Police and Priests.
You never accepted any of it at face value and had a healthy disrespect for the aristocracy of the church. We were the first family to leave the Papal Mass in Drogheda in 1979 because you were annoyed that the Pope was getting carried around in a chair while you had to sit in a field.
And every time that Pope would issue a pompous missive on the subject of divorce or abortion, you would throw your eyes to heaven and say, “What would a man know about those things”? When I’d point out that Jesus was a man, you’d say “Sure he lived at home with his Mother until he was thirty. Where do you think he learned everything he knew”?
At least I got to say goodbye before you went. I don’t think you’d have forgiven me if I didn’t. The first time we said goodbye was when I left home to move to London. You kept your emotions in check until I was about to pass through the departure gate. Finally you cracked and hugged me in your famous nicotine tinged embrace.
“Why in God’s name do you want to go to that God forsaken nation of child molesters”?
I sensed in your voice a hint of envy that you weren’t leaving with me. You lived all your life in a small Irish town while your siblings and then your children spread their wings to the four corners of the globe. I can’t help feeling that you felt suffocated by your place in life, as though you were in a village surrounded by a deep and forbidding wood. You knew however, that a light shone beyond those woods and you wanted to go and see what makes it shine.
You certainly bolted from that small town whenever you could, hitting the beaches of Southern Europe each summer. You even ventured to Eastern Europe before the wall came down which was tremendously cool to the teenage communist within me.
I met you in Sydney and Switzerland and the back streets of London’s Chinatown. You treated each as your personal fiefdom, finding the best place to sneak a smoke and a crafty glass of wine. It’s ironic that your last big trip was to the USA around the time of September 11th, 2001. In hindsight, the memory thief was already nibbling away at you then and if the whole world changed on that fateful day, then the same could be said for you.
You left Boston on the morning of Sept. 11th in a car heading for Niagara Falls with Dad and mad Uncle Brendan. You were probably the last people in the Northern hemisphere to hear that day’s news, because Brendan insisted on playing 1950’s Irish show band music all the way there in the car.
The events of that day have become legendary in our family. Your spur of the moment trip across the Canadian border without passports on a day when America was sealing its borders. Your insistence to the yanks that you should be allowed into their country when nobody else was (apart from some intrepid Mexican illegals) or your lack of understanding as to what all the fuss about. All of it proves that were unique and lived life on your terms.
It’s not just your sense of humour that I’ll miss. You were the typical Irish mammy is so many ways. Proud of all my achievements to the outside world but ready to put me in my place whenever I got ahead of myself. “I could bucken buy and sell you all” you’d say in that desire to show your self-confidence and to demonstrate that you would never commit the venal sin of cursing but could come up with a ready substitute.
I’ll also miss the cup of tea you used to offer me when I’d enter the sitting room, even when I’d only been to the toilet to relieve myself after the five cups of tea you had already offered that day. Tea was your currency and your way of saying hello.
You loved your tea as well of course and it was a challenge to all your children to make it to the correct strength and with just the right amount of Marvel creamer. You spurned milk because you were always watching your weight. How cruel then that God decided that you couldn’t eat and when you passed you were down to a weight you probably desired all your life but were not in a position to appreciate it.
We liked you the way you were though Mam. Always ready with a hug or a piece of advice. When I went through the pain of a break up in 1994, you were the only one who spoke sense to me and stepped beyond the clichés of “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “it’s probably for the best”. You reminded me of how I’d been raised and that I was entitled to my feelings and you also were to yours.
You were an ordinary Irish woman, but you will always be extraordinary to me. Enjoy the big lie in.
Rest in Peace.
You’re at rest now and the memory thief can no longer burgle your thoughts. I’d like to think that you are in a better place but to be honest, the hand of fate that God dealt you these past few years has tested my faith. All your obituaries spoke about your daily Mass attendance and unquestioning devotion. I’m not so sure about the unquestioning bit, but you weren’t rewarded for making that daily pilgrimage to St. Malacys.
You would tell me of course that your reward will be in heaven and no doubt you’re up there now telling the big fellow that he’s sitting in your chair. What those obituaries don’t say of course is that you always had questions about the doctrine we were forced to ingest in the old Ireland of Police and Priests.
You never accepted any of it at face value and had a healthy disrespect for the aristocracy of the church. We were the first family to leave the Papal Mass in Drogheda in 1979 because you were annoyed that the Pope was getting carried around in a chair while you had to sit in a field.
And every time that Pope would issue a pompous missive on the subject of divorce or abortion, you would throw your eyes to heaven and say, “What would a man know about those things”? When I’d point out that Jesus was a man, you’d say “Sure he lived at home with his Mother until he was thirty. Where do you think he learned everything he knew”?
At least I got to say goodbye before you went. I don’t think you’d have forgiven me if I didn’t. The first time we said goodbye was when I left home to move to London. You kept your emotions in check until I was about to pass through the departure gate. Finally you cracked and hugged me in your famous nicotine tinged embrace.
“Why in God’s name do you want to go to that God forsaken nation of child molesters”?
I sensed in your voice a hint of envy that you weren’t leaving with me. You lived all your life in a small Irish town while your siblings and then your children spread their wings to the four corners of the globe. I can’t help feeling that you felt suffocated by your place in life, as though you were in a village surrounded by a deep and forbidding wood. You knew however, that a light shone beyond those woods and you wanted to go and see what makes it shine.
You certainly bolted from that small town whenever you could, hitting the beaches of Southern Europe each summer. You even ventured to Eastern Europe before the wall came down which was tremendously cool to the teenage communist within me.
I met you in Sydney and Switzerland and the back streets of London’s Chinatown. You treated each as your personal fiefdom, finding the best place to sneak a smoke and a crafty glass of wine. It’s ironic that your last big trip was to the USA around the time of September 11th, 2001. In hindsight, the memory thief was already nibbling away at you then and if the whole world changed on that fateful day, then the same could be said for you.
You left Boston on the morning of Sept. 11th in a car heading for Niagara Falls with Dad and mad Uncle Brendan. You were probably the last people in the Northern hemisphere to hear that day’s news, because Brendan insisted on playing 1950’s Irish show band music all the way there in the car.
The events of that day have become legendary in our family. Your spur of the moment trip across the Canadian border without passports on a day when America was sealing its borders. Your insistence to the yanks that you should be allowed into their country when nobody else was (apart from some intrepid Mexican illegals) or your lack of understanding as to what all the fuss about. All of it proves that were unique and lived life on your terms.
It’s not just your sense of humour that I’ll miss. You were the typical Irish mammy is so many ways. Proud of all my achievements to the outside world but ready to put me in my place whenever I got ahead of myself. “I could bucken buy and sell you all” you’d say in that desire to show your self-confidence and to demonstrate that you would never commit the venal sin of cursing but could come up with a ready substitute.
I’ll also miss the cup of tea you used to offer me when I’d enter the sitting room, even when I’d only been to the toilet to relieve myself after the five cups of tea you had already offered that day. Tea was your currency and your way of saying hello.
You loved your tea as well of course and it was a challenge to all your children to make it to the correct strength and with just the right amount of Marvel creamer. You spurned milk because you were always watching your weight. How cruel then that God decided that you couldn’t eat and when you passed you were down to a weight you probably desired all your life but were not in a position to appreciate it.
We liked you the way you were though Mam. Always ready with a hug or a piece of advice. When I went through the pain of a break up in 1994, you were the only one who spoke sense to me and stepped beyond the clichés of “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “it’s probably for the best”. You reminded me of how I’d been raised and that I was entitled to my feelings and you also were to yours.
You were an ordinary Irish woman, but you will always be extraordinary to me. Enjoy the big lie in.
Rest in Peace.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
I measure out my Life in World Cups- Part 2
The World Cup has started and although Australia is one of the participants, you wouldn’t exactly say that excitement has reached fever pitch here. It’s more like a small cold with the occasional sniffle. Losing 4-0 in their first game hasn’t helped of course. The Aussies like winners and have expectations way above their ability. A trait they clearly learned from the English.
I kicked off an office sweep last week, drawing displeasure from my boss who thought the reference to France as being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys was not in the spirit of an International Banks diversity policy. He didn’t mind my reference to the English as whinging Poms, but that’s Australian double standards for you.
I think it’s fair to say that if Australia was not taking part, then interest here would be confined to those of us brought up in a European soccer culture and the young Asian fraternity who have been brainwashed by the Murdoch driven promotion of the English Premier League. Apart from Kiwi’s of course. There is a huge population of New Zealanders in Melbourne who are discovering the beauty of the World Game, helped of course by a last minute goal against Slovakia in their first game and an even better performance against Italy. I would mock their jubilance in achieving mere draws, but as the Irish are still celebrating the time we hammered England 1-1 in the 1990 World Cup, any giggling by me at New Zealand would be as hypocritical as Thierry Henry appealing for hand ball. And he would never do that, would he?
The past of course is another country. In 1994, that country was the USA. I was supposed to go, but impending nuptials got in the way. We kicked off that World Cup with a win against Italy. It lives in Irish folklore with the English game in Stuttgart in 1988 but doesn’t have the same pleasant memories for me. I watched the game in a house in Limerick in the heartland of Irish Rugby. In much the same way as many Kiwis are doing now, Ireland’s rugby fraternity jumped on the football bandwagon in 1994 without bothering to school up on such trivialities as rules and tactics. While the country enjoyed the match, I had to listen to a bunch of middle class oafs with no necks and cauliflower ears call for line outs every time the ball went out of play and triumphantly cheer every time we won a corner.
We beat Italy that day of course in Giants Stadium, New York. Paul McGrath played with a dead arm but still mastered the Latin millionaires that adorned the Italian side. Ray Houghton scored a freakish goal that made us dream about winning the World Cup. But it was all downhill from there. As was my impending nuptials as it happened. Our football woes were caused by FIFA dictating that we should play our remaining games in Florida, which in June is a smouldering cauldron with the sort of clamminess that could drown a fish. In short, it’s probably the last place freckly, pale skinned Irish people should play football.
Not only that, but they made us play at lunchtime when only mad dogs would be found on the Tampa streets.
I called my Mother to discuss tactics before the Dutch game in the last 16. She was a late convert to the beautiful game but like many Irish mammies, she was seduced by the dulcet Northern tones of Ireland’s then manager, Jack Charlton. She was pessimistic about Ireland’s chances. “It’s not the hate that will get them. It’s the humiliation”. In the end, it was heat and humidity that got them, but as the team that Jack built fractured at the end of that tournament, I can’t help thinking that my mother was right all along.
By the time France 1998 came around, I was in Ireland, surfing on the back of the Celtic Tiger (who was just a cub back then). I had just joined my current employer and was given the task of migrating data to the US. This meant dealing with technicians in India and Hong Kong, who were blissfully unaware that the festival of football was underway. They pencilled in a call for the afternoon of the day that the final was being played, to my great annoyance. But luckily we wrapped things up with an hour to spare. Our final conversation that night was around our plans for dinner.
I told the Asians on the call that they should head out and have an Irish, as I was tossing up between having a Chinese or an Indian. The joke flew over their heads unfortunately, but they felt a vague sense of being offended. That began a long history of me putting my foot in it at work, which has lasted right up to these games.
2002 was the year Ireland split between the Keane and McCarthy camps. I was a McCartyite, loyal to the conservative traditions of servitude and class order. If football is war without guns, then we fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate that long, hot summer. Eight years on, I’m still not sure what the argument was about. Lack of balls was mentioned at the time and in fairness that seems an appropriate metaphor.
I started a new job in 2006, one that would eventually lead me here to Australia. Strangely I remember very little of that summer’s World Cup, while I can still name the Zairian midfield from 1974. Maybe football has become less important to me or perhaps my brain had little else to think about back then. But those long ago games seemed filled with spectacular goals, vibrant green pitches and scantily clad Brazilian girls in the stands. World Cups now seem to be filled with dodgy penalties, bizarre refereeing decisions and people clad in overcoats in the stands. Is that all 2010 will be remembered for? Or is there a kid somewhere eating apple tart in his auntie’s house and memorising the middle names of the Honduran squad?
I kicked off an office sweep last week, drawing displeasure from my boss who thought the reference to France as being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys was not in the spirit of an International Banks diversity policy. He didn’t mind my reference to the English as whinging Poms, but that’s Australian double standards for you.
I think it’s fair to say that if Australia was not taking part, then interest here would be confined to those of us brought up in a European soccer culture and the young Asian fraternity who have been brainwashed by the Murdoch driven promotion of the English Premier League. Apart from Kiwi’s of course. There is a huge population of New Zealanders in Melbourne who are discovering the beauty of the World Game, helped of course by a last minute goal against Slovakia in their first game and an even better performance against Italy. I would mock their jubilance in achieving mere draws, but as the Irish are still celebrating the time we hammered England 1-1 in the 1990 World Cup, any giggling by me at New Zealand would be as hypocritical as Thierry Henry appealing for hand ball. And he would never do that, would he?
The past of course is another country. In 1994, that country was the USA. I was supposed to go, but impending nuptials got in the way. We kicked off that World Cup with a win against Italy. It lives in Irish folklore with the English game in Stuttgart in 1988 but doesn’t have the same pleasant memories for me. I watched the game in a house in Limerick in the heartland of Irish Rugby. In much the same way as many Kiwis are doing now, Ireland’s rugby fraternity jumped on the football bandwagon in 1994 without bothering to school up on such trivialities as rules and tactics. While the country enjoyed the match, I had to listen to a bunch of middle class oafs with no necks and cauliflower ears call for line outs every time the ball went out of play and triumphantly cheer every time we won a corner.
We beat Italy that day of course in Giants Stadium, New York. Paul McGrath played with a dead arm but still mastered the Latin millionaires that adorned the Italian side. Ray Houghton scored a freakish goal that made us dream about winning the World Cup. But it was all downhill from there. As was my impending nuptials as it happened. Our football woes were caused by FIFA dictating that we should play our remaining games in Florida, which in June is a smouldering cauldron with the sort of clamminess that could drown a fish. In short, it’s probably the last place freckly, pale skinned Irish people should play football.
Not only that, but they made us play at lunchtime when only mad dogs would be found on the Tampa streets.
I called my Mother to discuss tactics before the Dutch game in the last 16. She was a late convert to the beautiful game but like many Irish mammies, she was seduced by the dulcet Northern tones of Ireland’s then manager, Jack Charlton. She was pessimistic about Ireland’s chances. “It’s not the hate that will get them. It’s the humiliation”. In the end, it was heat and humidity that got them, but as the team that Jack built fractured at the end of that tournament, I can’t help thinking that my mother was right all along.
By the time France 1998 came around, I was in Ireland, surfing on the back of the Celtic Tiger (who was just a cub back then). I had just joined my current employer and was given the task of migrating data to the US. This meant dealing with technicians in India and Hong Kong, who were blissfully unaware that the festival of football was underway. They pencilled in a call for the afternoon of the day that the final was being played, to my great annoyance. But luckily we wrapped things up with an hour to spare. Our final conversation that night was around our plans for dinner.
I told the Asians on the call that they should head out and have an Irish, as I was tossing up between having a Chinese or an Indian. The joke flew over their heads unfortunately, but they felt a vague sense of being offended. That began a long history of me putting my foot in it at work, which has lasted right up to these games.
2002 was the year Ireland split between the Keane and McCarthy camps. I was a McCartyite, loyal to the conservative traditions of servitude and class order. If football is war without guns, then we fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate that long, hot summer. Eight years on, I’m still not sure what the argument was about. Lack of balls was mentioned at the time and in fairness that seems an appropriate metaphor.
I started a new job in 2006, one that would eventually lead me here to Australia. Strangely I remember very little of that summer’s World Cup, while I can still name the Zairian midfield from 1974. Maybe football has become less important to me or perhaps my brain had little else to think about back then. But those long ago games seemed filled with spectacular goals, vibrant green pitches and scantily clad Brazilian girls in the stands. World Cups now seem to be filled with dodgy penalties, bizarre refereeing decisions and people clad in overcoats in the stands. Is that all 2010 will be remembered for? Or is there a kid somewhere eating apple tart in his auntie’s house and memorising the middle names of the Honduran squad?
Thursday 3 June 2010
I Measure out my Life in World Cups - Part 1
The World Cup will shortly be among us and plans are being made in Australia for how best to enjoy an event which will take place in the middle of night. The hype is not quite on a par with Ireland in 1990 but a win or two will get the Aussies on board. They have a winning mentality which can only be fed by success.
I will be keeping a fond eye on New Zealand, if only to encourage my significant other to watch some late night TV. Watching England lose on penalties and seeing those cheating frog eating surrender monkeys lose are also high on my wish list.
But I get another feeling every time a World Cup comes round. I remember past competitions as milestones in my life, as though my very existence was measured in four year increments. My first was 1966 when I guess I was just learning to walk. I thankfully slept through England’s thieving of the trophy, although I’ve had to hear about it ever since. As an Irish comic said “the only plus side out of England winning this year’s World Cup is that it might finally get them to stop talking about 1966!”
1970 is my first memory of going to the cinema. They made a movie of that year’s World Cup in Mexico and Dad brought me and my brother along to see it. It’s also my only memory of being at the cinema with my Dad (he has always been an outdoor’s kind of guy). We had a black and white TV back then and the movie opened my eyes to technicolour. I can still see the vibrant emerald shades of the Axteca Stadium pitch and the bright yellow shirts of the triumphant Brazilians.
Four years later, we still had that old black and white TV and I had become a nine year football obsessive. Two days before the final, I received the welcome news that my Aunt Winnie had invested some bingo winnings in a new colour TV. My Dad and I were invited to watch the sour Germans take on the flying Dutchmen in the final and to feast on Aunt Winnie’s apple tarts (delicious on the lips but ran through you like Usain Bolt).
I hassled Dad all the way home to buy a colour TV and he humoured me. Sadly, back then I knew a lot more about football than I did about economics. But I’m pleased that the two most colourful memories from my childhood where in his company.
In 1978 my parents bought a portable television. We had moved into the colour world since the previous world cup, but my mother saw this as her personal domain. My abiding memory of 1978 is sitting in the kitchen, perched on high stools with my Dad and brother and watching football on that tiny black and white portable. My mother sat alone in the next room, reading a Mills and Boons novel and occasionally casting an eye on the soap opera on screen.
We did get her to watch one match during those finals which was interrupted by a powerful thunderstorm. My mother looked up from her Mills and Boons novel and saw the rain on TV. She instantly leapt up and raced out to the back yard to bring in the washing. When she came back, my Dad pointed out that the game was being played in Buenos Aires and we were thousands of miles away in Dundalk. “That must be one hell of a cloud” he said, which was just about the funniest thing I remember from the seventies.
I sat my school leaving exams in 1982 and went through the torment of trying to study while my brother mocked me by cheering every two minutes downstairs. I’d race down in the expectation of seeing a goal, only to see him rolling around laughing while on screen a South American footballer was rolling around in feigned injury and no goal was in sight. I still blame the Italy V Brazil quarter final for my spectacularly ordinary results.
I was 21 in 1986, full of bravado and cheap Northern Ireland beer. I’d fought a battle with my mother for years to gain better access to the television, particularly when football was on. She helped enormously in 1986 by dragging my Dad to America for a month while the finals were on. It meant he got to see no football and I got to see as much as I wanted.
In the summer of 1986 I was standing on the platform of the railway station of life. I had already bought my ticket and knew my final destination. We laughed, we danced, we snogged, and we squeezed the last juice out of our childhood. It was our last chance before the train left and we took it with enthusiasm. Innocence wasn't so much lost that summer; it was traded in for the rites of passage to a new life. It was the best of times and our lives were changing forever before our very eyes. 1986 is also famous for the fantastic goal that Maradona scored against England and the second one he scored that day wasn’t bad either.
Unless Ireland wins a World Cup, 1990 will forever be the Daddy of all tournaments. It was so wonderfully innocent, so new and exciting, so passionate and drunken. We wore tight fitting polyester shirts and didn’t care. We inflated plastic bananas (for reasons that still escape me); hung bunting from our houses and generally lost the run of ourselves. And best of all, I got to go. I stood in that stadium in Genoa when we beat Romania on penalties, I sang my heart out in Rome when we lost to Italy and sat outside the Palermo ground when we qualified for the second round and gave my best scarf to a passing Italian because the world had aligned at that very moment with a beautiful kiss of serendipity.
I fell in love for the first time just before that World Cup started and that love lasted until 1994, when it fell apart around the same time as Jack Charlton’s Irish team at that year’s finals. But that’s another story and only proves that love and football can be cruel mistresses.
To be continued…..
I will be keeping a fond eye on New Zealand, if only to encourage my significant other to watch some late night TV. Watching England lose on penalties and seeing those cheating frog eating surrender monkeys lose are also high on my wish list.
But I get another feeling every time a World Cup comes round. I remember past competitions as milestones in my life, as though my very existence was measured in four year increments. My first was 1966 when I guess I was just learning to walk. I thankfully slept through England’s thieving of the trophy, although I’ve had to hear about it ever since. As an Irish comic said “the only plus side out of England winning this year’s World Cup is that it might finally get them to stop talking about 1966!”
1970 is my first memory of going to the cinema. They made a movie of that year’s World Cup in Mexico and Dad brought me and my brother along to see it. It’s also my only memory of being at the cinema with my Dad (he has always been an outdoor’s kind of guy). We had a black and white TV back then and the movie opened my eyes to technicolour. I can still see the vibrant emerald shades of the Axteca Stadium pitch and the bright yellow shirts of the triumphant Brazilians.
Four years later, we still had that old black and white TV and I had become a nine year football obsessive. Two days before the final, I received the welcome news that my Aunt Winnie had invested some bingo winnings in a new colour TV. My Dad and I were invited to watch the sour Germans take on the flying Dutchmen in the final and to feast on Aunt Winnie’s apple tarts (delicious on the lips but ran through you like Usain Bolt).
I hassled Dad all the way home to buy a colour TV and he humoured me. Sadly, back then I knew a lot more about football than I did about economics. But I’m pleased that the two most colourful memories from my childhood where in his company.
In 1978 my parents bought a portable television. We had moved into the colour world since the previous world cup, but my mother saw this as her personal domain. My abiding memory of 1978 is sitting in the kitchen, perched on high stools with my Dad and brother and watching football on that tiny black and white portable. My mother sat alone in the next room, reading a Mills and Boons novel and occasionally casting an eye on the soap opera on screen.
We did get her to watch one match during those finals which was interrupted by a powerful thunderstorm. My mother looked up from her Mills and Boons novel and saw the rain on TV. She instantly leapt up and raced out to the back yard to bring in the washing. When she came back, my Dad pointed out that the game was being played in Buenos Aires and we were thousands of miles away in Dundalk. “That must be one hell of a cloud” he said, which was just about the funniest thing I remember from the seventies.
I sat my school leaving exams in 1982 and went through the torment of trying to study while my brother mocked me by cheering every two minutes downstairs. I’d race down in the expectation of seeing a goal, only to see him rolling around laughing while on screen a South American footballer was rolling around in feigned injury and no goal was in sight. I still blame the Italy V Brazil quarter final for my spectacularly ordinary results.
I was 21 in 1986, full of bravado and cheap Northern Ireland beer. I’d fought a battle with my mother for years to gain better access to the television, particularly when football was on. She helped enormously in 1986 by dragging my Dad to America for a month while the finals were on. It meant he got to see no football and I got to see as much as I wanted.
In the summer of 1986 I was standing on the platform of the railway station of life. I had already bought my ticket and knew my final destination. We laughed, we danced, we snogged, and we squeezed the last juice out of our childhood. It was our last chance before the train left and we took it with enthusiasm. Innocence wasn't so much lost that summer; it was traded in for the rites of passage to a new life. It was the best of times and our lives were changing forever before our very eyes. 1986 is also famous for the fantastic goal that Maradona scored against England and the second one he scored that day wasn’t bad either.
Unless Ireland wins a World Cup, 1990 will forever be the Daddy of all tournaments. It was so wonderfully innocent, so new and exciting, so passionate and drunken. We wore tight fitting polyester shirts and didn’t care. We inflated plastic bananas (for reasons that still escape me); hung bunting from our houses and generally lost the run of ourselves. And best of all, I got to go. I stood in that stadium in Genoa when we beat Romania on penalties, I sang my heart out in Rome when we lost to Italy and sat outside the Palermo ground when we qualified for the second round and gave my best scarf to a passing Italian because the world had aligned at that very moment with a beautiful kiss of serendipity.
I fell in love for the first time just before that World Cup started and that love lasted until 1994, when it fell apart around the same time as Jack Charlton’s Irish team at that year’s finals. But that’s another story and only proves that love and football can be cruel mistresses.
To be continued…..
Thursday 27 May 2010
Leaving St Kilda
I’ve been busy recently, nursing a broken arm that it is as stubborn as a spoilt child in its efforts to get better and working twelve hours a day on a project that will save no hungry children nor cause any statues to be built to me in years to come but will merely oil the wheels of Capitalism a little more. I’ve also been looking for a new place to live so time has been as elusive as Osama Bin Laden.
That search at least came to an end today when my better half and I signed a lease on a chocolate box house in Carlton. It has everything we’ve been looking for. A kitchen to stretch my new found culinary skills, space to store the debris that life builds and a loft above the garage which will substitute for the shed I’ve been subconsciously searching for since I turned 35.
But the thrill of arriving necessarily includes the pain of departure and our move to Carlton will involve leaving St Kilda which has been my home since I arrived in Australia.
After we signed the lease, I jumped on the tram back to St Kilda and as it turned onto the esplanade I felt a sadness that was akin to the day I left Ireland in 2007. A pale winter sun hung low in the sky and sailing boats bobbed on the bay in a vast white sailed armada. My mind was drawn to many things I would miss about St Kilda, even though it would only be a tram ride away.
It’s nice to have a pub within 50 metres of my front door. When I got to Melbourne first, I chose to live in the suburb of St Kilda because it was beside the bay and seemed to have the sort of exciting takeaway food options that suited my then bachelor lifestyle. I didn’t factor in the multitude of pubs that St Kilda boasts, because being Irish I assumed that every suburb would be the same in this regard.
I’ve since discovered that I was very lucky in this respect, because I could very easily have found myself living in a place as dry as the Sahara desert. If you leave the City Centre and travel east, you’ll pass through endless suburbs boasting KFC and McDonalds outlets on every intersection but as few pubs as you’d find in Mecca.
Each local council apparently can designate their areas as ‘dry’ and the Mormons and Free Presbyterians have clearly done a great job stacking these councils.
My local is The Village Belle, a pub that evokes memories of Victorian bygone days when the parasol carrying gentry of Melbourne would come out to the seaside on a warm summer’s day and finish their day off with a cooling ale at the Belle. Now it is home to hundreds of Irish backpackers and steak connoisseurs. They do a damned fine steak and the only decent chips I’ve tasted in Australia to date. An Irish friend of mine once said that the only thing she misses about home is real chipper chips. Every time I have a meal in the Belle, I’m reminded of that.
I didn’t realise I liked Ice Cream until I came to Australia. When I was the kid, the ultimate sophistication in restaurant deserts was to offer a ‘galaxy of ice cream’. This always turned out to be a single scoop of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, as though those were the only flavours imaginable. When Dad treated us to a ‘slider’ on summer holidays, you might be lucky enough to get raspberry ripple or the glamorous ‘Neapolitan’. But nothing that would be memorable beyond the two weeks of our holidays.
Australia has taken this a lot further. It’s not only hot here for nine months of the year (which let’s face it is the time to be eating frozen products) but boasts a high number of Italian immigrants. As a happy result I now have three ice cream shops within walking distance of my apartment, all competing with each other for ever more exotic flavours.
My favourite shop is “7 Apples” who do a great line in mint and pistachio. They call these ‘Gelato’ which adds some mystery to the process, as though this is a superior product to simple Ice cream. I’m not convinced but it looks like I’ll be leaving St Kilda without ever solving this mystery.
On a hot night these ice cream shops on Acland Street are as busy as a Turkey seller on Christmas Eve. They are quieter now that the mercury has dropped but still popular among the weekend strollers and Europeans like me who find 19c to be positively balmy.
My doctor mightn’t agree but I think having a gourmet pizza restaurant across the street from your house is fantastic and has led me to dream that I live in downtown Manhattan or the back streets of Naples. I’ve eaten a Quattro Formaggi from there at least once a week for the last three years which are tasty as hell but are probably causing a traffic jam in my arteries as we speak.
Carlton however, is the home of the Italian community in Melbourne and hosts the famous Lygon Street. So I shouldn’t be short of pizza options anyway. But I will miss the place across the road, if only because I can get food there now without any verbal interaction. A simple raising of my right eyebrow and a casual nod of the head elicits a thumbs up and a tasty meal 15 minutes later.
But what I’ll miss most is the sea. St Kilda has a rubbish beach by Australian standards. It’s pretty much man made and rumoured to be littered with needles and condoms (although I’ve never seen any). But it is a beach none the less and a stroll along the esplanade in summer while the sun is setting over the bay is the most pleasant thing you can do without getting wet.
But as that sun sets, a new one is rising in Carlton.
That search at least came to an end today when my better half and I signed a lease on a chocolate box house in Carlton. It has everything we’ve been looking for. A kitchen to stretch my new found culinary skills, space to store the debris that life builds and a loft above the garage which will substitute for the shed I’ve been subconsciously searching for since I turned 35.
But the thrill of arriving necessarily includes the pain of departure and our move to Carlton will involve leaving St Kilda which has been my home since I arrived in Australia.
After we signed the lease, I jumped on the tram back to St Kilda and as it turned onto the esplanade I felt a sadness that was akin to the day I left Ireland in 2007. A pale winter sun hung low in the sky and sailing boats bobbed on the bay in a vast white sailed armada. My mind was drawn to many things I would miss about St Kilda, even though it would only be a tram ride away.
It’s nice to have a pub within 50 metres of my front door. When I got to Melbourne first, I chose to live in the suburb of St Kilda because it was beside the bay and seemed to have the sort of exciting takeaway food options that suited my then bachelor lifestyle. I didn’t factor in the multitude of pubs that St Kilda boasts, because being Irish I assumed that every suburb would be the same in this regard.
I’ve since discovered that I was very lucky in this respect, because I could very easily have found myself living in a place as dry as the Sahara desert. If you leave the City Centre and travel east, you’ll pass through endless suburbs boasting KFC and McDonalds outlets on every intersection but as few pubs as you’d find in Mecca.
Each local council apparently can designate their areas as ‘dry’ and the Mormons and Free Presbyterians have clearly done a great job stacking these councils.
My local is The Village Belle, a pub that evokes memories of Victorian bygone days when the parasol carrying gentry of Melbourne would come out to the seaside on a warm summer’s day and finish their day off with a cooling ale at the Belle. Now it is home to hundreds of Irish backpackers and steak connoisseurs. They do a damned fine steak and the only decent chips I’ve tasted in Australia to date. An Irish friend of mine once said that the only thing she misses about home is real chipper chips. Every time I have a meal in the Belle, I’m reminded of that.
I didn’t realise I liked Ice Cream until I came to Australia. When I was the kid, the ultimate sophistication in restaurant deserts was to offer a ‘galaxy of ice cream’. This always turned out to be a single scoop of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, as though those were the only flavours imaginable. When Dad treated us to a ‘slider’ on summer holidays, you might be lucky enough to get raspberry ripple or the glamorous ‘Neapolitan’. But nothing that would be memorable beyond the two weeks of our holidays.
Australia has taken this a lot further. It’s not only hot here for nine months of the year (which let’s face it is the time to be eating frozen products) but boasts a high number of Italian immigrants. As a happy result I now have three ice cream shops within walking distance of my apartment, all competing with each other for ever more exotic flavours.
My favourite shop is “7 Apples” who do a great line in mint and pistachio. They call these ‘Gelato’ which adds some mystery to the process, as though this is a superior product to simple Ice cream. I’m not convinced but it looks like I’ll be leaving St Kilda without ever solving this mystery.
On a hot night these ice cream shops on Acland Street are as busy as a Turkey seller on Christmas Eve. They are quieter now that the mercury has dropped but still popular among the weekend strollers and Europeans like me who find 19c to be positively balmy.
My doctor mightn’t agree but I think having a gourmet pizza restaurant across the street from your house is fantastic and has led me to dream that I live in downtown Manhattan or the back streets of Naples. I’ve eaten a Quattro Formaggi from there at least once a week for the last three years which are tasty as hell but are probably causing a traffic jam in my arteries as we speak.
Carlton however, is the home of the Italian community in Melbourne and hosts the famous Lygon Street. So I shouldn’t be short of pizza options anyway. But I will miss the place across the road, if only because I can get food there now without any verbal interaction. A simple raising of my right eyebrow and a casual nod of the head elicits a thumbs up and a tasty meal 15 minutes later.
But what I’ll miss most is the sea. St Kilda has a rubbish beach by Australian standards. It’s pretty much man made and rumoured to be littered with needles and condoms (although I’ve never seen any). But it is a beach none the less and a stroll along the esplanade in summer while the sun is setting over the bay is the most pleasant thing you can do without getting wet.
But as that sun sets, a new one is rising in Carlton.
Wednesday 28 April 2010
The Great Divide between Left and Right
My Mother used to say that I was so awkward that sometimes my left arm didn’t know what my right arm was doing. She might be right, but for the last few weeks my right arm has been asking what my left arm has been doing all these years. Ever since I had my unplanned meeting with the bitumen on St Kilda Road, my right arm has decided to work to rule. He doesn’t mind lifting the odd cup of tea or tapping out a few keystrokes like this. But you only realise what your dominant arm does when it refuses to do anything in the bathroom involving effusions or teeth brushing.
This is where my left arm comes in. Or doesn’t as the case may be. I realise now that lefty has been taking it easy all these years. Happy to carry the odd suitcase or shopping bag, but only if righty is busy. Happy to do his share of scratching duties and to provide a target for my right hand during applause.
But he’s basically a free loader whose purpose in life seems merely to give me some symmetry.
Righty has done all the important things. Won all those arm wrestling contests that I’ve been secretly taking part in all my life (unbeaten in the last 20), flipped the remote control at home or the calculator at work to the immense annoyance of anyone I’ve ever lived with or shared office space with. And of course he’s the one who reaches out to shake hands with his corresponding appendage on anyone I meet. I’m not wearing a cast and give up on the sling after a week or so after discovering that it was pretty useless and wasn’t even enough to get somebody to offer me a seat on the tram.
As a result, it’s not clear to people I meet that righty is only operating at about 20% strength and in particular doesn’t like been turned clockwise. So when I meet people they tend to offer their right hand in salute and like a fool I tend to offer mine. It’s not doing a lot from my reputation that they first experience people have of me is a weak handshake and a grimace.
I’ve noticed that everyone offers the right hand when shaking; even people who are left handed in every other respect. It makes me realise that this might be the last injustice in the western world and I’ve played my part in perpetrating it. We’ve sorted out women’s equality and racism and yet the right hand is allowed to take a leading role in life while the left has to hide in the shadows, spending a lot of his life buried in a pocket while the right gets on with all the fun stuff.
For example, when I was a young fellow, trawling the discos of Dundalk in search of Northern Irish girls desperate to escape the troubles for a night and willing as a result to put up with my thick tongued mumbling, it was my right hand that partied. The dancing style of the day was minimalist. We’d sway gently to new romantic electro twaddle masquerading as music, with our left hand planted firmly in the front pocket of our skin tight cords, while our right arm moved from side to side with all the grace of a farmer herding cows towards the milking sheds. Righty got to lift all the beer we drank for Dutch courage and if I was lucky, got to hold the hand of some soft skinned daughter of Ulster as we queued for our coats.
Looking back I noticed right hand dominance in India. They have embraced a lot of things from the west like motor cars, mobile phones and the Internet. But they seem to have turned their back on knives and forks. The Chinese have an excuse for this, being able to do things with chopsticks that I would struggle to achieve with an entire kitchen of instruments. But the Indians still use their hands to eat, a practice that would be fine if their cuisine didn’t involve so much sauce and yogurt. When I dined with Indians I noticed that they only use their right hand when eating, which is impressive when cutting Nan bread for example. When I asked them why they didn’t let their left hand join in the fun, they looked at each other nervously before explaining that old leftie is used for another purpose which is not hygienically matched with eating.
It seems that toilet paper is the other western invention yet to be embraced in the sub continent.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be living in a left dominated world, while the right goes through an intensive training process. I’ve never broken a bone before so I don’t have much experience with the healing process. The fact that I feel no pain is a blessing but doesn’t help with getting the arm back in order. I often forget there is a problem for example and find myself in embarrassing situations, particularly ones that involve leverage like getting off a sofa or out of a bath.
I certainly won’t be taking righty for granted any more. Once he’s up and running again, I’m going to take him off the strenuous arm wrestling circuit and get him a nice massage every couple of weeks. It’s time I started spoiling my appendages. They are the only ones I’ve got.
Many people have asked me if my accident has made me re evaluate life. I’m not sure if it’s that profound. I certainly care more about my body now and I’ve lost that feeling of invulnerability which used to shadow me. We are brittle and when you bend us we break. Which reminds me of something else my Mother used to say: “Look after your body and your body will look after you”. I’d salute that, if only my arm was up to it.
This is where my left arm comes in. Or doesn’t as the case may be. I realise now that lefty has been taking it easy all these years. Happy to carry the odd suitcase or shopping bag, but only if righty is busy. Happy to do his share of scratching duties and to provide a target for my right hand during applause.
But he’s basically a free loader whose purpose in life seems merely to give me some symmetry.
Righty has done all the important things. Won all those arm wrestling contests that I’ve been secretly taking part in all my life (unbeaten in the last 20), flipped the remote control at home or the calculator at work to the immense annoyance of anyone I’ve ever lived with or shared office space with. And of course he’s the one who reaches out to shake hands with his corresponding appendage on anyone I meet. I’m not wearing a cast and give up on the sling after a week or so after discovering that it was pretty useless and wasn’t even enough to get somebody to offer me a seat on the tram.
As a result, it’s not clear to people I meet that righty is only operating at about 20% strength and in particular doesn’t like been turned clockwise. So when I meet people they tend to offer their right hand in salute and like a fool I tend to offer mine. It’s not doing a lot from my reputation that they first experience people have of me is a weak handshake and a grimace.
I’ve noticed that everyone offers the right hand when shaking; even people who are left handed in every other respect. It makes me realise that this might be the last injustice in the western world and I’ve played my part in perpetrating it. We’ve sorted out women’s equality and racism and yet the right hand is allowed to take a leading role in life while the left has to hide in the shadows, spending a lot of his life buried in a pocket while the right gets on with all the fun stuff.
For example, when I was a young fellow, trawling the discos of Dundalk in search of Northern Irish girls desperate to escape the troubles for a night and willing as a result to put up with my thick tongued mumbling, it was my right hand that partied. The dancing style of the day was minimalist. We’d sway gently to new romantic electro twaddle masquerading as music, with our left hand planted firmly in the front pocket of our skin tight cords, while our right arm moved from side to side with all the grace of a farmer herding cows towards the milking sheds. Righty got to lift all the beer we drank for Dutch courage and if I was lucky, got to hold the hand of some soft skinned daughter of Ulster as we queued for our coats.
Looking back I noticed right hand dominance in India. They have embraced a lot of things from the west like motor cars, mobile phones and the Internet. But they seem to have turned their back on knives and forks. The Chinese have an excuse for this, being able to do things with chopsticks that I would struggle to achieve with an entire kitchen of instruments. But the Indians still use their hands to eat, a practice that would be fine if their cuisine didn’t involve so much sauce and yogurt. When I dined with Indians I noticed that they only use their right hand when eating, which is impressive when cutting Nan bread for example. When I asked them why they didn’t let their left hand join in the fun, they looked at each other nervously before explaining that old leftie is used for another purpose which is not hygienically matched with eating.
It seems that toilet paper is the other western invention yet to be embraced in the sub continent.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be living in a left dominated world, while the right goes through an intensive training process. I’ve never broken a bone before so I don’t have much experience with the healing process. The fact that I feel no pain is a blessing but doesn’t help with getting the arm back in order. I often forget there is a problem for example and find myself in embarrassing situations, particularly ones that involve leverage like getting off a sofa or out of a bath.
I certainly won’t be taking righty for granted any more. Once he’s up and running again, I’m going to take him off the strenuous arm wrestling circuit and get him a nice massage every couple of weeks. It’s time I started spoiling my appendages. They are the only ones I’ve got.
Many people have asked me if my accident has made me re evaluate life. I’m not sure if it’s that profound. I certainly care more about my body now and I’ve lost that feeling of invulnerability which used to shadow me. We are brittle and when you bend us we break. Which reminds me of something else my Mother used to say: “Look after your body and your body will look after you”. I’d salute that, if only my arm was up to it.
Tuesday 20 April 2010
This Week's TV Guide
In April 1916, my grandfathers started walking to Dublin from opposite ends of Ireland. Their goal was to take part in the rising that had erupted in Ireland’s Capital over Easter weekend, when a rag bag bunch of Irishmen took on the mighty British Empire. Neither of them made it to Dublin as it happens and never met each other either.
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
Monday 5 April 2010
The Great Crash of 2010
March 31st 2010 is a day I’ll remember forever, if only because I was asked to state that date about 100 times by several concerned health service staff. Ironically I’d been to see David O’Doherty the night before and he mentioned that we probably have only ten important events in our lives and the rest of the time is pretty boring. What I wouldn’t give for a little tedium now.
I left home at 8am and for the first time ever I forgot my keys. That suggested something was up. Twenty minutes later I was cycling to work when one of those ten important events happened.
I don't remember much about the crash. I was tearing down St Kilda Road as fast as an over weight cyclist like me can go when I think another cyclist braked suddenly in front of me. I went over my handlebars in what I assume was a triple summersault with tuck, last seen in the 10 meter diving competition at the Beijing Olympics.
Next thing I remember I was on a gurney in the trauma centre of the Alfred Hospital being fussed over by a lot of pretty women in uniform. They wheeled me in for a CT scan which was pretty scary. Head injuries were their main concern while not being whisked to a spaceship was mine as being slid into one of those things is like being transported in a claustrophobic time machine.
I was taken back to the trauma area so a doctor could stick a few stitches in my forehead while telling me she was the only member of her family that can't sew a hem in a skirt (which didn't fill me with confidence) and she checked my blurred vision with an eye chart application on her Iphone. God bless Steve Jobs and his philanthropic work, I thought. The only problem is that Iphones have a power saving devise which causes them to go blank after a few seconds of non-use. When this happened 30 seconds into my eye test, I let out a shriek, assuming I’d gone blind. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box at this point, I should stress.
When it was all done and dusted and my cycling gear had been cut off me in the best traditions of ER, they broke the news to me that I had fractured my right eye socket, just in the place where my glasses had smashed into my face (so I'm blaming my Buddy Holly specs for that one) and broken the arterial bone in my right elbow. I think that's the funny bone, so this blog would have been twice as witty if it was still intact, but more worryingly, that's my drinking arm and also the one I use for scratching, so I'm going to be sober and itchy for the next six weeks.
What they didn't tell me and left me to discover for myself was that I had met the road face first and as a result I look like a side of uncured bacon. My mister universe application will have to be put on hold.
They kept me in overnight for observation. They seemed mainly concerned about the eye socket and how vision was poor in my right eye. I pointed out that this was due to my short sightedness and it would have been fine if my glasses hadn't been smashed earlier, but you can't tell these health care professionals anything.
As a result, I have to go back on Tuesday morning to have a titanium plate put into my eye socket (which will make airport security interesting in the future).
The arm is bothering me more to be honest. I get spasms when I move it which are as a painful as childbirth (at least my own birth which is the only one I'm familiar with) but they've given me pain killers that would knock out a horse. Having said that, they would have shot a horse if he was in my condition but only after they had stopped laughing at the sight of a horse on a bike.
My wounds are being dressed three times a day by my loving partner and I'm catching up on loads of DVDs. The only problem is that my only working glasses were smashed in the crash and I can't wear lenses as my eye looks like a blood orange. So I'm condemned to wearing prescription sunglasses. Now I know how Bono feels, permanently living in a sepia world.
Despite all of the above, I actually count myself lucky. St Kilda Road is busy on a Wednesday morning and I fell just inches from the menacing wheels of several large automobiles. Also head butting the road is not a sensible activity and could have led to serious noggin problems. Clearly my mother was correct when she said that my brain was in my backside.
I was also lucky with my timing as Emergency rooms are at their quietest at that time of the week. I got excellent care, with specialists queuing up to prod me as the day went on. The morphine also helped it must be said and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that all the fussing and hi-tech equipment didn’t bring out the little boy in me.
They kept asking me where I was and what date it was to check if the old brain was working. But I won’t forget 31st March, 2010 in a hurry. It was my first time ever in an ambulance, first ever stitches, first ever broken bone, first ever night in a hospital as an adult, first ever time in a wheelchair.
I’m at home now, learning to use my left hand for things that nature never intended and licking my wounds. The good looks are slowly coming back but the confidence to get back on a bike might take longer. Next time I’m wearing a motor bike helmet and a suit of armour.
I left home at 8am and for the first time ever I forgot my keys. That suggested something was up. Twenty minutes later I was cycling to work when one of those ten important events happened.
I don't remember much about the crash. I was tearing down St Kilda Road as fast as an over weight cyclist like me can go when I think another cyclist braked suddenly in front of me. I went over my handlebars in what I assume was a triple summersault with tuck, last seen in the 10 meter diving competition at the Beijing Olympics.
Next thing I remember I was on a gurney in the trauma centre of the Alfred Hospital being fussed over by a lot of pretty women in uniform. They wheeled me in for a CT scan which was pretty scary. Head injuries were their main concern while not being whisked to a spaceship was mine as being slid into one of those things is like being transported in a claustrophobic time machine.
I was taken back to the trauma area so a doctor could stick a few stitches in my forehead while telling me she was the only member of her family that can't sew a hem in a skirt (which didn't fill me with confidence) and she checked my blurred vision with an eye chart application on her Iphone. God bless Steve Jobs and his philanthropic work, I thought. The only problem is that Iphones have a power saving devise which causes them to go blank after a few seconds of non-use. When this happened 30 seconds into my eye test, I let out a shriek, assuming I’d gone blind. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box at this point, I should stress.
When it was all done and dusted and my cycling gear had been cut off me in the best traditions of ER, they broke the news to me that I had fractured my right eye socket, just in the place where my glasses had smashed into my face (so I'm blaming my Buddy Holly specs for that one) and broken the arterial bone in my right elbow. I think that's the funny bone, so this blog would have been twice as witty if it was still intact, but more worryingly, that's my drinking arm and also the one I use for scratching, so I'm going to be sober and itchy for the next six weeks.
What they didn't tell me and left me to discover for myself was that I had met the road face first and as a result I look like a side of uncured bacon. My mister universe application will have to be put on hold.
They kept me in overnight for observation. They seemed mainly concerned about the eye socket and how vision was poor in my right eye. I pointed out that this was due to my short sightedness and it would have been fine if my glasses hadn't been smashed earlier, but you can't tell these health care professionals anything.
As a result, I have to go back on Tuesday morning to have a titanium plate put into my eye socket (which will make airport security interesting in the future).
The arm is bothering me more to be honest. I get spasms when I move it which are as a painful as childbirth (at least my own birth which is the only one I'm familiar with) but they've given me pain killers that would knock out a horse. Having said that, they would have shot a horse if he was in my condition but only after they had stopped laughing at the sight of a horse on a bike.
My wounds are being dressed three times a day by my loving partner and I'm catching up on loads of DVDs. The only problem is that my only working glasses were smashed in the crash and I can't wear lenses as my eye looks like a blood orange. So I'm condemned to wearing prescription sunglasses. Now I know how Bono feels, permanently living in a sepia world.
Despite all of the above, I actually count myself lucky. St Kilda Road is busy on a Wednesday morning and I fell just inches from the menacing wheels of several large automobiles. Also head butting the road is not a sensible activity and could have led to serious noggin problems. Clearly my mother was correct when she said that my brain was in my backside.
I was also lucky with my timing as Emergency rooms are at their quietest at that time of the week. I got excellent care, with specialists queuing up to prod me as the day went on. The morphine also helped it must be said and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that all the fussing and hi-tech equipment didn’t bring out the little boy in me.
They kept asking me where I was and what date it was to check if the old brain was working. But I won’t forget 31st March, 2010 in a hurry. It was my first time ever in an ambulance, first ever stitches, first ever broken bone, first ever night in a hospital as an adult, first ever time in a wheelchair.
I’m at home now, learning to use my left hand for things that nature never intended and licking my wounds. The good looks are slowly coming back but the confidence to get back on a bike might take longer. Next time I’m wearing a motor bike helmet and a suit of armour.
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