Its school holiday time in Australia at the moment, not that you could tell if you went by the weather. It’s been wetter than an otter’s pocket along the east coast this week with flooding of Noah proportions in Queensland.
Many Melbournians head to Queensland at this time of year in much the same as Irish nurses and builders used to head to Spain in July. I guess all those Aussie holidays have had to be cancelled, which might explain why so many families are wandering the streets of Melbourne this week, searching desperately for something that will keep little Abbey occupied until her father gets home from work.
As someone who has reached the ripe old age of 45 without siring an offspring, I feel I’m in the perfect position to comment on the parenting of others. There is no greater smugness to be found than comes from the childless, after all.
Shopping is an activity that mothers enjoy. Department stores are air-conditioned and it’s a chance to kill two birds with one stone. It gets the kids out of the house and allows the mother pick up that Oprah biography that her thoughtless husband overlooked at Christmas. Little Abbey got lots of books for Christmas and despite the fact that she would have preferred something electronic, she has been fed a steady diet of propaganda that books are better than chocolate and are the best present a little girl could get.
Two weeks later her mother is standing in a bookshop trying to explain to Abbey that she has enough books already. Abbey throws back some surprisingly logical arguments.
“But you said I should read as many books as possible and I’d become the smartest person in the world”.
She then used the trick that children have been adopting for centuries. Ask for everything and then your parents will compromise by offering just one thing. In that way, the child can leave every shop their parent’s visit with their favourite thing from that outlet. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Abbey’s mother changed tactics. “You’re not getting a book because Mammy already bought you a sticker and a new hat”, highlighting that they had visited two stores already. “And you know that Mammy won’t buy you anything when you talk to her in that tone”.
Abbey smiled. One change of tone coming up. This was easier than getting a Happy meal out of Daddy on a Saturday morning.
Why do parents insist on bringing kids into stores that sell products aimed at kids and then get upset when the child wants something? How many adults could put up with being brought to pubs and told to sit quietly in the corner and ignore the services on offer?
Cafes are the main battle ground between the childless and the baby endowed. It’s got to the point where some places advertise unofficially as being “child friendly” and some make it clear that you’d better have a driving license if you want to get a cup of coffee.
God forbid that you find yourself in the wrong place for your lifestyle. It’s worse than a Muslim mistaking a synagogue for a mosque. The childless tend to stumble out of bed later on a weekend morning and really they don’t want any more noise than the sizzling sound of frying pig. Make the wrong cafe choice however and they will have to slalom past badly parked prams to find a table before listening to the deafening sound of wailing babies and sugar fuelled two year olds.
Parents have an uncanny ability to drown out the sound of their children. I shudder to think what would happen if little Timmy was saying, “Mammy, the house is on fire”. Because if Mammy was engaged in a deep discussion on the merits of Colin Firth’s arse in Pride and Prejudice with her fellow mammies, it wouldn’t matter if little Timmy himself was on fire.
Parents seem to think that their children are adorable when running headlessly around restaurants. Even when they knock over old ladies and toy with the idea of dipping their hands into the deep fat fryer.
You can spot the childless people at this point, clenching nervously as Timmy grabs the breadknife left carelessly on the counter or two year Jason investigates the multi plug set up behind the fridge.
Meanwhile, the parents tuck into their second Latte and treasure the chance to escape from their own children. Thankfully, there are many cafes in Melbourne where the pram is unwelcome. Apartheid is alive and well in the world of bacon and eggs I’m happy to say.
Australia is a land of immigrants and when they inevitably have kids, they naturally want to bring the offspring back to their homeland to find grandparents who will mind the child for two weeks while the parents go drinking with their friends. Therefore it is impossible to get a flight out of Australia without being accompanied by more babies than you’d find at a Brad and Angelina Christmas Party.
I’m a Qantas Gold member and one of the perks is that they sit you near the front when you’re flying economy so that you can get off quicker. This means that on a flight to Europe, you save five minutes on disembarking after listening to 23 hours of screaming children. Babies are seated up the front to allow their parents to use the cot contraption on the galley wall. Many adults find these long trips uncomfortable. Imagine how a baby feels, given that they do not have the option of sucking a sweet to balance the air pressure.
I don’t want to appear like a Grinch but airlines seem to be racing to the bottom of a low cost model. I’d pay extra to fly with airline that had an over 12s policy.
Maybe when I have my own kids, I’ll mellow. It would nice to have my own little terror in cafes and airplanes to annoy everyone else while I enjoy a latte or in-flight movie. In the meantime I’m sticking to my side of the line of apartheid and only venturing into cafes without prams stacked up in the door.
Sunday 16 January 2011
Tuesday 11 January 2011
Come to New Zealand when the moon is high
New Zealand is known as Aotearoa in Maori, which means, “Land of the Long White Cloud”. Although it should be called “Land of the Long Flat White” as they seem more obsessed with coffee than even the latte sipping classes of Melbourne.
I’ve been to New Zealand on ten occasions; mostly it must be said to the South Island and the parts of the North Island where white people go for their holidays. This Christmas we were a bit more adventurous and travelled West to the black sand beaches south of Auckland. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but then all of New Zealand is. It’s a country that would be spoilt by tourism if it wasn’t so far from the parts of the world where tourists live.
Two days after Christmas we loaded up the borrowed twenty-year-old Nissan and pointed her west. With the mountains of the Coromandel in the rear view mirror, we rolled gently through the lush farmland of the Waikato towards Hamilton. It’s a boring town with a boring name, but to an Irishman like me it was relief to find a place that I could pronounce. Unlike the South Island with its quaint English and Scottish names, the North Island clings proudly to it’s Maori past.
We passed through Karangahake, Tirohia, Te Aroha, Waitoa, Waihao and Tatuanui with tongue twisting speed and the thought struck me that spelling must be the first thing Kiwis learn at school.
Hamilton at least is easy to pronounce to a foreigner like me. It boasts a University that looks like it was built by a bunch of 1960’s Soviet engineers on an exchange program and a Rugby Stadium that has been tarted up for the upcoming World Cup. New Zealand is about the only country on the planet where you can mention the World Cup and not make people think about soccer. That being said, the Kiwis are proud about the round ball game these days as well. They have two notable achievements from South Africa 2010. They are the only team to go through that tournament unbeaten and they won the bravery award for sending a team called the “All Whites” to Johannesburg.
Our next stop and home for the following five days was Raglan. It’s a surf town and presumably it was endowed with a western name because nobody lived there before the white man arrived. Like Charlie in Apocalypse Now, it seemed that Maori people didn’t surf.
Raglan, for those who are not keen followers of English military history was the General blamed for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. The town was founded in 1854 before that fateful day in the Crimea and maybe by the time news reached New Zealand the name had stuck.
We reached Raglan as the sun was setting and you have to be on the West Coast of New Zealand to really appreciate it. The shore was lined with Pohutukawa trees, otherwise known as the New Zealand Christmas Bush because they are covered in vibrant scarlet flowers in the weeks leading up to the festive season. I was reliably informed by the horticultural expert in the car beside me that these blossoms would disappear before Christmas Day but thankfully she was proved wrong and they were still on display when I left in early January.
The West Coast, as in most countries, is wilder than the East. The odd thing about New Zealand is that the West faces the Tasman Sea and the East looks out into the vast Pacific. The Sea in this case throws up wild waves and a huge swell while the Ocean for once lives up its name and is peaceful and calm.
Raglan developed as a surf resort when Kiwi’s, Aussies and Americans came to test that mighty swell. Some of them are still there but it’s mainly filled with Maori families on holiday and Waikato farmers trying to forget about milking cows for a few days.
We checked into a boutique apartment on the waterfront and headed out to check out the town. The first thing I was pleased to note was the presence of a pub. This is not to be taken for granted in New Zealand where the cold hand of Scottish Presbyterianism still stalks the land. Surfers like their coffee, so the main street was littered with baristas and shops selling billabong and quicksilver products.
The next day we headed to Bridal Falls, a spectacular waterfall that cascades down the side of an old lava flow. Its not the only evidence of volcano’s in the area. The black sand that marks out the beaches of the North Island are the result of eruptions that happened millions of years ago.
In the harbour the sand turns to black mud, which the kids love playing with. When they weren’t jumping off the little bridge across the harbour, they were busy making mudballs in the shape of cannon balls, which they would drop on fishing boats that dared to pass under the footbridge.
At night, we ventured out to sample the live music scene. I wouldn’t say I’m the
coolest cat in town when it comes to live music. The last couple of gigs I’ve been to in Melbourne involved artists that wrote music before I was born and had to be led out on stage in wheelchairs and with oxygen tanks on standby.
So we decided to see what the young people are listening to. First of all we stepped into a bar playing reggae music. The place was full of young Maori, which was in line with my experience on previous travels around the world. From Cuba to Indonesia, indigenous people everywhere love the sound of Bob Marley.
Across the road, the pub was hosting a grunge band, a style of music that peaked in Seattle in the mid nineties, but appears to have found a home among the young Pakeha (as white kiwis are sometimes known) of New Zealand.
We finished the evening sitting on the pier watching the full moon rise over the Tasman. The words of Ava Gardner seemed apt. If this isn’t the end of the world, you can certainly see it from here!
I’ve been to New Zealand on ten occasions; mostly it must be said to the South Island and the parts of the North Island where white people go for their holidays. This Christmas we were a bit more adventurous and travelled West to the black sand beaches south of Auckland. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but then all of New Zealand is. It’s a country that would be spoilt by tourism if it wasn’t so far from the parts of the world where tourists live.
Two days after Christmas we loaded up the borrowed twenty-year-old Nissan and pointed her west. With the mountains of the Coromandel in the rear view mirror, we rolled gently through the lush farmland of the Waikato towards Hamilton. It’s a boring town with a boring name, but to an Irishman like me it was relief to find a place that I could pronounce. Unlike the South Island with its quaint English and Scottish names, the North Island clings proudly to it’s Maori past.
We passed through Karangahake, Tirohia, Te Aroha, Waitoa, Waihao and Tatuanui with tongue twisting speed and the thought struck me that spelling must be the first thing Kiwis learn at school.
Hamilton at least is easy to pronounce to a foreigner like me. It boasts a University that looks like it was built by a bunch of 1960’s Soviet engineers on an exchange program and a Rugby Stadium that has been tarted up for the upcoming World Cup. New Zealand is about the only country on the planet where you can mention the World Cup and not make people think about soccer. That being said, the Kiwis are proud about the round ball game these days as well. They have two notable achievements from South Africa 2010. They are the only team to go through that tournament unbeaten and they won the bravery award for sending a team called the “All Whites” to Johannesburg.
Our next stop and home for the following five days was Raglan. It’s a surf town and presumably it was endowed with a western name because nobody lived there before the white man arrived. Like Charlie in Apocalypse Now, it seemed that Maori people didn’t surf.
Raglan, for those who are not keen followers of English military history was the General blamed for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. The town was founded in 1854 before that fateful day in the Crimea and maybe by the time news reached New Zealand the name had stuck.
We reached Raglan as the sun was setting and you have to be on the West Coast of New Zealand to really appreciate it. The shore was lined with Pohutukawa trees, otherwise known as the New Zealand Christmas Bush because they are covered in vibrant scarlet flowers in the weeks leading up to the festive season. I was reliably informed by the horticultural expert in the car beside me that these blossoms would disappear before Christmas Day but thankfully she was proved wrong and they were still on display when I left in early January.
The West Coast, as in most countries, is wilder than the East. The odd thing about New Zealand is that the West faces the Tasman Sea and the East looks out into the vast Pacific. The Sea in this case throws up wild waves and a huge swell while the Ocean for once lives up its name and is peaceful and calm.
Raglan developed as a surf resort when Kiwi’s, Aussies and Americans came to test that mighty swell. Some of them are still there but it’s mainly filled with Maori families on holiday and Waikato farmers trying to forget about milking cows for a few days.
We checked into a boutique apartment on the waterfront and headed out to check out the town. The first thing I was pleased to note was the presence of a pub. This is not to be taken for granted in New Zealand where the cold hand of Scottish Presbyterianism still stalks the land. Surfers like their coffee, so the main street was littered with baristas and shops selling billabong and quicksilver products.
The next day we headed to Bridal Falls, a spectacular waterfall that cascades down the side of an old lava flow. Its not the only evidence of volcano’s in the area. The black sand that marks out the beaches of the North Island are the result of eruptions that happened millions of years ago.
In the harbour the sand turns to black mud, which the kids love playing with. When they weren’t jumping off the little bridge across the harbour, they were busy making mudballs in the shape of cannon balls, which they would drop on fishing boats that dared to pass under the footbridge.
At night, we ventured out to sample the live music scene. I wouldn’t say I’m the
coolest cat in town when it comes to live music. The last couple of gigs I’ve been to in Melbourne involved artists that wrote music before I was born and had to be led out on stage in wheelchairs and with oxygen tanks on standby.
So we decided to see what the young people are listening to. First of all we stepped into a bar playing reggae music. The place was full of young Maori, which was in line with my experience on previous travels around the world. From Cuba to Indonesia, indigenous people everywhere love the sound of Bob Marley.
Across the road, the pub was hosting a grunge band, a style of music that peaked in Seattle in the mid nineties, but appears to have found a home among the young Pakeha (as white kiwis are sometimes known) of New Zealand.
We finished the evening sitting on the pier watching the full moon rise over the Tasman. The words of Ava Gardner seemed apt. If this isn’t the end of the world, you can certainly see it from here!
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