The doctor’s waiting room was full at 9.30am. I looked around and noticed that I was the only man there. Do women suffer more from ailments than the male of the species or do they just care more about their health? I found a leaflet on the waiting room table that gave me the answer. It had a picture of a middle aged man covered in engine oil with a headline saying “Isn’t it time you treated your body like you treated you car?”
It was marketing that wasn’t aimed at me. I haven’t washed my car for two months; feed it with overly octaned fuel and leave it parked in dodgy neighbourhoods beside cars of low moral character. But the ad did enough to make me realise that men don’t get their bodies serviced enough. At least not in the medical sense.
It’s not as though we don’t talk about health matters. There is a myth that men change the subject to football whenever the mention of haemorrhoids or testicular cancer comes up.
Maybe that’s the case when we’re in our twenties and full of the bravado of youth and a feeling of invincibility. But sometime in my thirties, I noticed the conversation among my mates in the pub changed from being totally about football to the delicate matter of the deterioration of our bodies. After a few beers and the necessary thirty minutes spent talking about property and cars, one of the lads would mention a lump he’d found or a recurring pain in his knee and we’d nod sagely and give our support before turning back to more important matters, such as whether Roy Keane was right to walk out of the 2002 World Cup.
I was always upfront about my ailments. I never really saw the point in keeping them quiet, as though talking about them helped me to normalise things. So on many occasions I bored my friends with tales of sinus problems, blood pressure monitoring devises that I had to wear at night and a strange encounter I once had with a consultant with rubber gloves and a microscopic camera.
The Health Service in Ireland gets regular media coverage, particularly about how rubbish it is. And when you live in Australia you realise how accurate this is. I could name five things I’ve seen here that would radically improve the Irish health system, but there is no point, because none of my ideas would enrich hospital consultants and drug companies and that’s the main objective of the Irish health system.
I’ve been impressed with the Australia system from the first time I visited a doctor here and she told me what my blood pressure reading was. That was more information than I’d gleamed from my Irish doctor in 12 years of visits. She has sent me for more tests than a cyclist endures in the Tour De France. And not because there is anything particularly wrong with me. It’s just that in Australia, prevention is more important than cure.
My employer is also concerned about my health, which is touching, and has decided to send me for an annual independent check up. I’m pretty relaxed now about the whole thing, even the blood and urine stuff. I’ve had blood taken so many times this year, my left arm feels like a dartboard and I’ve perfected the art of peeing into a small container without getting your hands wet.
But this check up had an extra surprise at the end. The doctor was a middle aged woman with a slightly eerie stare, so when she uttered the words “Prostate Examination”, I froze. She asked me if I was comfortable with that and I croaked back “As comfortable as any man could be with what you are about to do”.
She got me, as the say in the trade, in the position and went to work. I tried to think of butter cups and snowflakes but it didn’t help. The best way I can describe it is that it felt like she was looking for her keys in the bottom of her handbag.
When it was over, I was left to button up and wallow in the indignity of it all. I mean if a woman is going to do that to you, you’d expect at least a glass of wine first and a chat about how attractive you are. At least it wasn’t as bad as the time my friend Paul went for the same check. Half way through the process the doctor asked him if he was OK. Paul said “Yes, but your ring is tickling a little”. The doctor said, “Oh, that’s not a ring, that’s my wristwatch”!
I was given a clean bill of health, which was ironic, because two days later I was laid low with my first illness since arriving in the lucky country. I developed a nasty case of the runs and spent the Australia Day bank holiday on the toilet, which is also how many Australians spent the holiday, although they at least have alcohol to blame.
I tried initially to starve it out and went on a strict plain food diet. But it wasn’t working, so finally I had to swallow my pride and get some drugs. Unfortunately, Chemists tend to employ young ladies who can advise on the beauty products for sale as well as sell “fix me quick” potions to the likes of me. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable explaining my symptoms to anyone younger than me, so I hovered at the back until the only older lady in the shop was free.
I shuffled up, trying hard to look healthy for some reason. “I need something for Diarrhoea” I whispered. “You need something for Gonorrhoea” she shouted. “You’ll need a prescription for that”. I had the attention of the whole store at this stage which was unfortunate because it made me want to get to a toilet very quickly.
So if there is a motto to all this, I would call on all my male readers to go out and get your body serviced, before your big end gives in like mine did.
Thursday 28 January 2010
Wednesday 20 January 2010
A Cool Change is gonna come
The Irish are a people who dream about money but talk about the weather. It’s hard to know what Australians think about (sex and gambling I’d wager) but they hardly ever talk about the weather. And that is a great disappointment to me because I find it fascinating. High pressure fronts, wind direction and those fluffy clouds that look like candyfloss on hot summer days. It’s a wonderful mystery to me.
Since I arrived here, I’ve endured the hottest day ever in Victoria, the warmest night ever and storms of biblical proportions. Not to mention the mysterious ‘cool change’ which arrives like a gift from God on hot days and like most things religious goes unquestioned by the masses. I have yet to find a single Melbournian who can explain it.
This interest in matters meteorological lay dormant within me for many years. Geography was my best subject at school but not my favourite. I leaned towards the excitement of History and the romantic ability of English to overcome chronic shyness. A heart wrenching poem nervously passed to a girl on a school bus had more effect than a weather forecast, that’s for sure.
Then there were the dull years living in England and Ireland where weather was boring and predictable. Only two patterns were noticeable. Cloudy with sunny spells or sunny with cloudy spells. But Australia has reawakened my interest in the cosmos. Over here they have big weather, cyclones licking the Northern coasts, great thermal airstreams bubbling over the Central desert and the mighty Antarctic to the South, throwing freezing winds and rain across the Southern Ocean. It’s no wonder they can afford a dedicated weather channel that seems to constantly have breaking news of epic proportions. A cyclone in Darwin, floods in NSW, a heat wave in Adelaide, all breathlessly delivered by shiny hosts who look like they’d be in their element if a Tsunami wiped out the Eastern Seaboard.
So I spend part of my day now staring at clouds, like some 19th Century English poet, checking temperatures and wind directions and looking for predictions on the web as to when the glorious cool change will come.
Much of this is practical of course. I cycle to work, so I need to know whether to bring a rain jacket or sun crème and to mentally prepare myself for the conditions on the way home. Last week I cycled home in 43c heat, which is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It was hotter than a stolen Ferrari and most of the City had taken the sensible precaution of staying home with blinds pulled and the air conditioning on full blast. I shared the road home with some mad dogs and the occasional Englishmen who found out they had rented a Colonial house with stately qualities which doesn’t include a cooling system. They quickly realised that the only air conditioning available to them is in their car. And so they spent the night of 43c heat, circling the City in their SUV’s.
When I got home I lay on the couch and watched the room spinning around me. That was fun until I felt the contents of my lunch revolving back to their entry point.
Wind has become a fascination for me. I cycle 8km northward towards the city each day and then 8km southward towards St Kilda in the evening. The wind on the other hand takes the opposite approach. With the regularity of sunrise, a warm northerly blows into my face as I trundle up St Kilda Road and then each afternoon it switches direction so that a fierce southerly coming from the Antarctic will stifle my progress on the way home. It’s enough to make you want to move to the opposite side of town.
Wind is also the aspect of weather that does get spoken about here. People know that a North wind means hot air, bush fire risk and occasionally red dust from the Central desert. Winds from the South bring cool air and sometimes, in this drought ridden corner of the world, rain.
Ireland is just about the windiest country in the world but despite the constant chatter about the weather, hardly anyone understands or discusses the wind. Rain dominates conversion, as though people think that after two millennia they can find a new and interesting way of talking about it. If Eskimos have 74 different words for snow, then Irish people can match this when it comes to rain. If someone comes back from lunch in Dublin and is asked what the weather is like, he can say something like “it’s a soft day but it’s only spitting” and everyone would know what they mean. Ask him what direction the wind is coming from though and you’ll get a blank stare. The only wind that gets regular discussion there is they smelly variety caused by drinking too much Guinness.
As for the cool change, you’ll find 453,000 references to it on Google but none of them seem to explain how it happens. When it comes, temperatures can drop by 20c in twenty minutes and sometimes you can actually feel it chasing you up the street. It’s as refreshing as a cool beer on a hot day and does more to improve the mood of Melbournians than all the prescription drugs taken by suburban housewives.
I’ve set myself the task of trying to understand it and will spend 2010 studying weather patterns and searching bookstores for suitable texts that are neither too technical nor overly simplistic, such as cloud pattern books aimed at the neurotically romantic. There has to be a better explanation out there than the standard one, which runs along the lines that the central desert is hot and the Antarctic is cold and they winds created by both fight a daily battle for supremacy over the skies of Melbourne.
I may even take a college course in meteorology. But that would cost money of course and as an Irishman, that’s what I’m secretly thinking about.
Since I arrived here, I’ve endured the hottest day ever in Victoria, the warmest night ever and storms of biblical proportions. Not to mention the mysterious ‘cool change’ which arrives like a gift from God on hot days and like most things religious goes unquestioned by the masses. I have yet to find a single Melbournian who can explain it.
This interest in matters meteorological lay dormant within me for many years. Geography was my best subject at school but not my favourite. I leaned towards the excitement of History and the romantic ability of English to overcome chronic shyness. A heart wrenching poem nervously passed to a girl on a school bus had more effect than a weather forecast, that’s for sure.
Then there were the dull years living in England and Ireland where weather was boring and predictable. Only two patterns were noticeable. Cloudy with sunny spells or sunny with cloudy spells. But Australia has reawakened my interest in the cosmos. Over here they have big weather, cyclones licking the Northern coasts, great thermal airstreams bubbling over the Central desert and the mighty Antarctic to the South, throwing freezing winds and rain across the Southern Ocean. It’s no wonder they can afford a dedicated weather channel that seems to constantly have breaking news of epic proportions. A cyclone in Darwin, floods in NSW, a heat wave in Adelaide, all breathlessly delivered by shiny hosts who look like they’d be in their element if a Tsunami wiped out the Eastern Seaboard.
So I spend part of my day now staring at clouds, like some 19th Century English poet, checking temperatures and wind directions and looking for predictions on the web as to when the glorious cool change will come.
Much of this is practical of course. I cycle to work, so I need to know whether to bring a rain jacket or sun crème and to mentally prepare myself for the conditions on the way home. Last week I cycled home in 43c heat, which is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It was hotter than a stolen Ferrari and most of the City had taken the sensible precaution of staying home with blinds pulled and the air conditioning on full blast. I shared the road home with some mad dogs and the occasional Englishmen who found out they had rented a Colonial house with stately qualities which doesn’t include a cooling system. They quickly realised that the only air conditioning available to them is in their car. And so they spent the night of 43c heat, circling the City in their SUV’s.
When I got home I lay on the couch and watched the room spinning around me. That was fun until I felt the contents of my lunch revolving back to their entry point.
Wind has become a fascination for me. I cycle 8km northward towards the city each day and then 8km southward towards St Kilda in the evening. The wind on the other hand takes the opposite approach. With the regularity of sunrise, a warm northerly blows into my face as I trundle up St Kilda Road and then each afternoon it switches direction so that a fierce southerly coming from the Antarctic will stifle my progress on the way home. It’s enough to make you want to move to the opposite side of town.
Wind is also the aspect of weather that does get spoken about here. People know that a North wind means hot air, bush fire risk and occasionally red dust from the Central desert. Winds from the South bring cool air and sometimes, in this drought ridden corner of the world, rain.
Ireland is just about the windiest country in the world but despite the constant chatter about the weather, hardly anyone understands or discusses the wind. Rain dominates conversion, as though people think that after two millennia they can find a new and interesting way of talking about it. If Eskimos have 74 different words for snow, then Irish people can match this when it comes to rain. If someone comes back from lunch in Dublin and is asked what the weather is like, he can say something like “it’s a soft day but it’s only spitting” and everyone would know what they mean. Ask him what direction the wind is coming from though and you’ll get a blank stare. The only wind that gets regular discussion there is they smelly variety caused by drinking too much Guinness.
As for the cool change, you’ll find 453,000 references to it on Google but none of them seem to explain how it happens. When it comes, temperatures can drop by 20c in twenty minutes and sometimes you can actually feel it chasing you up the street. It’s as refreshing as a cool beer on a hot day and does more to improve the mood of Melbournians than all the prescription drugs taken by suburban housewives.
I’ve set myself the task of trying to understand it and will spend 2010 studying weather patterns and searching bookstores for suitable texts that are neither too technical nor overly simplistic, such as cloud pattern books aimed at the neurotically romantic. There has to be a better explanation out there than the standard one, which runs along the lines that the central desert is hot and the Antarctic is cold and they winds created by both fight a daily battle for supremacy over the skies of Melbourne.
I may even take a college course in meteorology. But that would cost money of course and as an Irishman, that’s what I’m secretly thinking about.
Friday 8 January 2010
That Was The Decade That Was
So that was the decade that was. The naughties are now consigned to history where they will fight with other decades for prominence. What other period of time could boast the dot com bubble, the start of World War 3 (it’s happening folks, even if you don’t realise it), the invention of social networking, one World Cup ruined by Roy Keane and another by the hand of frog, the election of a black President in America, Tsunamis and the brutal clubbing to death of the Celtic Tiger?
If you’re Irish like me, the World Cups and the untimely death of our feline economy will vie for top place, your individual preference being based on whether you have a job or not. I have one, so I lean towards the football. Unfortunately, the media aren’t quite up to speed on that issue. I still await the great scholarly work explaining how Thierry Henry was quite literally the hand-tool of the devil.
The economy, on the other hand, is well served in this regard. I took the opportunity over Christmas, when not sunbathing and cavorting around New Zealand, to catch up on events in my home country through the medium of David McWilliams latest book and a DVD of “Pure Mule”, a TV series of such immense beauty and social narrative that it will be taught to Irish school children in the future.
“Follow the Money” is a great read but depressing at the same time. McWilliams conclusion is that Ireland is screwed no matter what happens. He argues that we should leave the Euro and hand the country back to the Brits with a little post-it note saying “Sorry about the mess”. He suggests that Australia is the only logical bolthole, which is worrying for me. I thought I was the first one to realise this back in 2007 and wanted to preserve my smugness.
“Pure Mule”, on the other hand, brought me back to the heady days of 2005 when social status was judged on how many properties you owned and how many spa hotels you had visited in the last year. It ran for only six episodes, each individually handcrafted by playwright Eugene O’Brien and I have been looking for a DVD copy for the last four years. I even wrote to the production company like some star crossed teenaged stalker, but to no avail.
I had given up hope until last month when I found myself stumbling through Dublin Airport on the way to the US, nursing a hangover and in desperate need of sleep. I wandered round the gift shop to kill some time and found what I had been searching for these past four years.
Box sets are probably the best invention of the last decade, allowing the time starved viewer to watch at his leisure, which usually means guilty weekends watching 12 episodes of “The West Wing” back to back.
Pure Mule came with bonus episodes made in 2009, which allowed a sociologically comparison of the boom years in 2005 to the bust era that Ireland now suffers from. I watched all 8 episodes in a guilty weekend after new years and was taken by how much my home country has changed in the four years that separated the series from its finale.
Back in 2005, in the fictional midlands town in which the series is set, most people worked in construction or supporting services, such as selling drink and cigarettes to construction workers. The first meal of the day consisted of a breakfast roll stuffed deep fried pig presented in several formats. Dinner on the other hand was consumed in the posh French or Thai restaurant which had opened in town.
Fast forward to 2009 and construction in Ireland is only carried out by children with Lego sets. Drink and tobacco sales seem to be holding up however. When Guinness starts losing business, we’re all in trouble.
To an ex-pat like me, it was a sobering summary of how my homeland has imploded. I like to think I saw it coming and that played a large part in my decision to emigrate to Australia. In fact I can trace my decision back to May 2006, when I read an article by economist Morgan Kelly. He predicted the crash pretty much as it transpired and you don’t need me to tell you because Morgan is busy filling the media with “I told you so” stories. Smugness, it seems, is the only growing business in Ireland these days.
One thing that will never decline however, is the ability of Irish people to tell a story. There are only 4 million of us and we make up less than 1% of the English speaking population of the world, yet we’ve won 4% of Nobel Prizes for literature. If you visit bookstores in Melbourne or Auckland as I did this Christmas, you’ll notice the prominent display of Irish writers from Joseph O’Connor to Colm McCarty to Marion Keyes to Colm Toibin. It’s a sobering thought when I sit down each week to write this blog. There are many great Irish writers and some of them are even able to get paid for it
I thought of our ability to write, sing and play when listening to an Irish podcast this week. The speaker made the valid point that Irish people don’t think. We don’t spend enough time looking for the true meaning of things or life beyond the superficial. This can be seen in the Celtic Tiger boom which was so shallow you could paddle in it.
She compares us to the French who teach philosophy in school and nurture deep thought. She might be right, but we beat the French on music and poetry for example, which are widely thought in Irish schools. In any event, too much thinking can lead you to justifying things like cheating in football matches. But let’s not dwell on that. It so naughties. Happy New Year and New Decade to you.
If you’re Irish like me, the World Cups and the untimely death of our feline economy will vie for top place, your individual preference being based on whether you have a job or not. I have one, so I lean towards the football. Unfortunately, the media aren’t quite up to speed on that issue. I still await the great scholarly work explaining how Thierry Henry was quite literally the hand-tool of the devil.
The economy, on the other hand, is well served in this regard. I took the opportunity over Christmas, when not sunbathing and cavorting around New Zealand, to catch up on events in my home country through the medium of David McWilliams latest book and a DVD of “Pure Mule”, a TV series of such immense beauty and social narrative that it will be taught to Irish school children in the future.
“Follow the Money” is a great read but depressing at the same time. McWilliams conclusion is that Ireland is screwed no matter what happens. He argues that we should leave the Euro and hand the country back to the Brits with a little post-it note saying “Sorry about the mess”. He suggests that Australia is the only logical bolthole, which is worrying for me. I thought I was the first one to realise this back in 2007 and wanted to preserve my smugness.
“Pure Mule”, on the other hand, brought me back to the heady days of 2005 when social status was judged on how many properties you owned and how many spa hotels you had visited in the last year. It ran for only six episodes, each individually handcrafted by playwright Eugene O’Brien and I have been looking for a DVD copy for the last four years. I even wrote to the production company like some star crossed teenaged stalker, but to no avail.
I had given up hope until last month when I found myself stumbling through Dublin Airport on the way to the US, nursing a hangover and in desperate need of sleep. I wandered round the gift shop to kill some time and found what I had been searching for these past four years.
Box sets are probably the best invention of the last decade, allowing the time starved viewer to watch at his leisure, which usually means guilty weekends watching 12 episodes of “The West Wing” back to back.
Pure Mule came with bonus episodes made in 2009, which allowed a sociologically comparison of the boom years in 2005 to the bust era that Ireland now suffers from. I watched all 8 episodes in a guilty weekend after new years and was taken by how much my home country has changed in the four years that separated the series from its finale.
Back in 2005, in the fictional midlands town in which the series is set, most people worked in construction or supporting services, such as selling drink and cigarettes to construction workers. The first meal of the day consisted of a breakfast roll stuffed deep fried pig presented in several formats. Dinner on the other hand was consumed in the posh French or Thai restaurant which had opened in town.
Fast forward to 2009 and construction in Ireland is only carried out by children with Lego sets. Drink and tobacco sales seem to be holding up however. When Guinness starts losing business, we’re all in trouble.
To an ex-pat like me, it was a sobering summary of how my homeland has imploded. I like to think I saw it coming and that played a large part in my decision to emigrate to Australia. In fact I can trace my decision back to May 2006, when I read an article by economist Morgan Kelly. He predicted the crash pretty much as it transpired and you don’t need me to tell you because Morgan is busy filling the media with “I told you so” stories. Smugness, it seems, is the only growing business in Ireland these days.
One thing that will never decline however, is the ability of Irish people to tell a story. There are only 4 million of us and we make up less than 1% of the English speaking population of the world, yet we’ve won 4% of Nobel Prizes for literature. If you visit bookstores in Melbourne or Auckland as I did this Christmas, you’ll notice the prominent display of Irish writers from Joseph O’Connor to Colm McCarty to Marion Keyes to Colm Toibin. It’s a sobering thought when I sit down each week to write this blog. There are many great Irish writers and some of them are even able to get paid for it
I thought of our ability to write, sing and play when listening to an Irish podcast this week. The speaker made the valid point that Irish people don’t think. We don’t spend enough time looking for the true meaning of things or life beyond the superficial. This can be seen in the Celtic Tiger boom which was so shallow you could paddle in it.
She compares us to the French who teach philosophy in school and nurture deep thought. She might be right, but we beat the French on music and poetry for example, which are widely thought in Irish schools. In any event, too much thinking can lead you to justifying things like cheating in football matches. But let’s not dwell on that. It so naughties. Happy New Year and New Decade to you.
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