Once upon a time in a mythical kingdom far, far away, a princess was born. She grew up surrounded by birdsong and the tinkling melody of a nearby brook and spent her days dreaming of a prince who would take her off to the Land of Oz where they would live happily ever after.
Alas, she didn’t manage to find a prince and had to settle for me instead. Yes ladies, that’s right. The author of this little old blog is about to hitch his wagon to the matrimonial star. Sorry to let so many of you down.
I’m walking up the aisle on the 14th May in a beautiful sea side town in New Zealand and while I’m not expecting much media attention and couldn’t care less if I don’t get any, I am a little miffed that the nuptials of a couple of upper class Brits is attracting so much attention.
Will and Kate sound like the characters from a bad American sit-com. They seem like a perfectly decent couple and I wish them well, but do we have to see and read so much about them?
When I lived in Ireland, British media overwhelmed us. You couldn’t pick and choose your viewing pleasure. For every quality costume drama on the BBC, there was a Princess Diana documentary or a fawning examination of the Queen’s fondness for small dogs with big ears (they remind her of her eldest son, I’m guessing). We were trained to hit the off button when the Queen’s speech was broadcast on Christmas Day, but during the rest of the year it was easier to sit back and take whatever the English were throwing at us. Royal “It’s a knock-out”, Charles talking to plants or the cringingly embarrassing way Britain lost the run of itself when Diana died.
When I moved to Australia, I thought I was safe from this picture book fascination with the British Royal Family. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything, it’s worse. Britons are lumbered with their royalty. Australians choose to have the 85 year old decedent of some Germans as their head of state.
Every few years, they have a referendum to ditch the Royals and become a Republic. But it always fails because the collective imagination of 22 million Australians can’t come up with anything better than paying homage to a pensioner at the other side of the world. The stumbling block appears to be how they would elect a head of state, in the absence of having one born first to the ruling Windsor family. It’s a problem that 170 other republics in the world have figured out, but is still perplexing Australians. My guess is that this constitutional issue is really a smoke screen and that Australia secretly likes a bit of the romance that royalty brings and more importantly that inertia is the strongest contributor to elections.
So it shouldn’t surprise me I suppose, that they are falling over themselves with unbridled enthusiasm when it comes to this upcoming wedding. All five free to air channels have cancelled their Friday night schedules to cover the event live and there will be more Australian journalists in London this week than you would find at a free bar at a media awards night.
Normally liberal newspapers like the Melbourne Age are carrying marsh mallow coloured supplements this week with sections called “What will she wear” and helpful links to websites selling commemorative mugs and tee towels. There is of course the occasional satirical piece but they all just add to the fascination with something that really should be left to the pages of Hello magazine and one of those lifestyle channels on pay TV.
Even those satirical efforts are under attack however. “Chasers” is the funniest thing on Australian TV. My favourite sketch was when George Bush came to Sydney and they dressed a guy up like Osama Bin Laden and he got through 3 security barriers and into Bush’s hotel. They also had a good go at lampooning the Pope when he came to Australia.
But the Royals are out of bounds it seems. The Chasers had planned to do an “alternative” wedding show from London. But Buckingham Palace has said that coverage of Will and Kate’s nuptials cannot be used “in any drama, comedy, satirical or similar entertainment” which will come as a surprise to most of the British media who have been taking the piss out of their Royals for as long as I remember.
The best we can look forward to on Friday is that Dame Edna Everage will provide commentary on one of the Australian channels, which at least means we’ll get a small laugh among all the pomposity.
Of course, by me writing about the royal wedding here, I’m falling into the same trap and no doubt encouraging you, my readers, to subconsciously wonder what colour hat the Queen will wear (I’m guessing Green) and to think about dresses and horse drawn carriages.
They talk about how two billion will watch tomorrow’s wedding. Nobody mentions that the other five billion in the world won’t watch, even though through the power of modern media most of them could. I’ll be part of that five billion. Not because I’m anti English. Personally I think they are great and every house should have one. As a butler preferably. They make great butlers.
I won’t be watching for the same reason that I don’t watch Oprah, don’t care about Brad and Angelina and don’t watch reality TV. I get my escapism through sport. And anyway, I have my own wedding to plan. My stag party is on this Saturday and I have taken responsibility to put together all the music for our big day. I also have to get all the commemorative mugs or tee towels sorted out. Seems you can’t have a wedding these days without them.
Friday 29 April 2011
Tuesday 12 April 2011
My Undercover Life
Nigel works on the cash desk at Myers, Melbourne’s biggest department store. We’re not exactly on first name terms but he was wearing a nametag and that gave the game away. He sold me 300 dollars worth of shirts without so much as a hello or thank you. The most interaction he could muster was a sharp intake of breath and a condemning sigh when I put my credit card into his gizmo with the chip facing the wrong way.
I was my normal subservient self and muttered “thank you” as I slunk towards the exit. I’ve always been nervous in shops. I think it goes back to the time I was working in an accountancy office at the age of 18. One of our clients owned a fashion shop and suspected one of his staff was stealing. I was given an undercover role to try and flush him out. My task was to buy something and then see what he did with the cash. Did he ring it up on the register or just open the till and give me change?
Needless to say, life in an accountancy office is not always filled with such adrenalin-fuelled work and I took on the assignment willingly. On the way to the shop I rehearsed my lines, trying to plan a plot line that would ensure that I didn’t go straight for the kill. My strategy was to check out a few items before casually asking him for a jumper. I entered the shop whistling a jaunty tune. The suspect was behind the counter and I could feel him staring at me as I tried to casually peruse the shirt rack.
I felt like the guilty party in the shop and cancelled my original plan and figured I’d get things over with as quickly as possible. I ambled up to the counter and in a croaky voice that wasn’t at all part of my rehearsal I asked what they had in the way of winter sweaters. He looked at me as though I was an idiot and explained that as we were in the middle of spring, they weren’t exactly stocking winter clothes.
A look of terror shot across my face as I contemplated the prospect of returning to base and having to report an aborted mission. “Any chance I could get a pair of trousers instead?” I asked. By the look he gave me, I knew I’d been rumbled. From that point on he did everything by the book including a knowing wink when he told me to hold on to the receipt.
I returned to work embarrassed and was put off clothes shopping for life. When I am forced to buy something I tend to pick the first non-hideous thing I see and race to the counter. I never try things on and have a cupboard full of shirts that are too tight and trousers that are a little short. I keep the shirts because I kid myself that I might actually lose weight one day but I’m not sure why I keep the trousers. Perhaps I believe that old age might bring some shrinkage.
Charlie Brooker recently penned a witty article in The Guardian on the treatment of waiters and retail staff. His point was that many people treat these staff with contempt. I think the opposite applies. Go to a clothes shop and you are made to feel like a gap-toothed yokel whose fashion sense comes from Albania circa 1977. Try and buy a computer or one of those Apple products that are taking over the world and you’ll be met with the smug tones of an over educated shop assistant who wants to prove your stupidity to justify his own under employment.
The worst staff you will meet are in restaurants and cafes. Melbourne is famous for it’s culinary culture and I eat out now about as often as I used to go to the pub in Ireland. It has the same net effect on my tummy size but at least in Ireland you are generally met with friendliness in pubs. Café staff here seem to have graduated from the College of non-hospitality and surliness. Equal employment law also seems to not apply in this sector. There is a diverse range of people working in restaurants, just not in any one place. Some cafes are staffed entirely by twenty something male metrosexuals with ‘too cool for school’ expressions while others are staffed by Scandinavian looking teenage girls who look permanently bored or over worked.
It seems that the owner of every eating establishment is looking for a distinct style and the attitude and demeanour of their waiters is the best way of portraying this. It’s just a shame that none of them have thought about trying a friendly theme where people might actually smile at you when you order you’re over priced and under caffeinated latte.
Saturday mornings are the worst time for service. The whole of Melbourne seems to go out for breakfast on that day and most of the good cafes are busy from 8am onwards. They’ll wedge you into a shared table with a couple of mothers with toddlers and dump a bottle of water and two glasses in front of you. If you’re lucky they’ll come back in 30 minutes with a look of shock on their face when you say you might actually like to order some food.
Their body language screams that they would rather be anywhere else in the world than waiting for you to make your pathetic order. They don’t bother telling you which menu options are sold out (which by the time I get there at 11am is pretty much everything). They prefer to let you order first so they can enjoy telling you that you can’t have it.
I generally leave full but emotionally beaten down, with no positive memories of the retail trade except a free pair of trousers from that undercover mission. They are a little short, but maybe one day I’ll grow into them.
I was my normal subservient self and muttered “thank you” as I slunk towards the exit. I’ve always been nervous in shops. I think it goes back to the time I was working in an accountancy office at the age of 18. One of our clients owned a fashion shop and suspected one of his staff was stealing. I was given an undercover role to try and flush him out. My task was to buy something and then see what he did with the cash. Did he ring it up on the register or just open the till and give me change?
Needless to say, life in an accountancy office is not always filled with such adrenalin-fuelled work and I took on the assignment willingly. On the way to the shop I rehearsed my lines, trying to plan a plot line that would ensure that I didn’t go straight for the kill. My strategy was to check out a few items before casually asking him for a jumper. I entered the shop whistling a jaunty tune. The suspect was behind the counter and I could feel him staring at me as I tried to casually peruse the shirt rack.
I felt like the guilty party in the shop and cancelled my original plan and figured I’d get things over with as quickly as possible. I ambled up to the counter and in a croaky voice that wasn’t at all part of my rehearsal I asked what they had in the way of winter sweaters. He looked at me as though I was an idiot and explained that as we were in the middle of spring, they weren’t exactly stocking winter clothes.
A look of terror shot across my face as I contemplated the prospect of returning to base and having to report an aborted mission. “Any chance I could get a pair of trousers instead?” I asked. By the look he gave me, I knew I’d been rumbled. From that point on he did everything by the book including a knowing wink when he told me to hold on to the receipt.
I returned to work embarrassed and was put off clothes shopping for life. When I am forced to buy something I tend to pick the first non-hideous thing I see and race to the counter. I never try things on and have a cupboard full of shirts that are too tight and trousers that are a little short. I keep the shirts because I kid myself that I might actually lose weight one day but I’m not sure why I keep the trousers. Perhaps I believe that old age might bring some shrinkage.
Charlie Brooker recently penned a witty article in The Guardian on the treatment of waiters and retail staff. His point was that many people treat these staff with contempt. I think the opposite applies. Go to a clothes shop and you are made to feel like a gap-toothed yokel whose fashion sense comes from Albania circa 1977. Try and buy a computer or one of those Apple products that are taking over the world and you’ll be met with the smug tones of an over educated shop assistant who wants to prove your stupidity to justify his own under employment.
The worst staff you will meet are in restaurants and cafes. Melbourne is famous for it’s culinary culture and I eat out now about as often as I used to go to the pub in Ireland. It has the same net effect on my tummy size but at least in Ireland you are generally met with friendliness in pubs. Café staff here seem to have graduated from the College of non-hospitality and surliness. Equal employment law also seems to not apply in this sector. There is a diverse range of people working in restaurants, just not in any one place. Some cafes are staffed entirely by twenty something male metrosexuals with ‘too cool for school’ expressions while others are staffed by Scandinavian looking teenage girls who look permanently bored or over worked.
It seems that the owner of every eating establishment is looking for a distinct style and the attitude and demeanour of their waiters is the best way of portraying this. It’s just a shame that none of them have thought about trying a friendly theme where people might actually smile at you when you order you’re over priced and under caffeinated latte.
Saturday mornings are the worst time for service. The whole of Melbourne seems to go out for breakfast on that day and most of the good cafes are busy from 8am onwards. They’ll wedge you into a shared table with a couple of mothers with toddlers and dump a bottle of water and two glasses in front of you. If you’re lucky they’ll come back in 30 minutes with a look of shock on their face when you say you might actually like to order some food.
Their body language screams that they would rather be anywhere else in the world than waiting for you to make your pathetic order. They don’t bother telling you which menu options are sold out (which by the time I get there at 11am is pretty much everything). They prefer to let you order first so they can enjoy telling you that you can’t have it.
I generally leave full but emotionally beaten down, with no positive memories of the retail trade except a free pair of trousers from that undercover mission. They are a little short, but maybe one day I’ll grow into them.
Friday 8 April 2011
What's your favourite Celtic Tiger Moment?
I went to see David O’Doherty in the Melbourne Comedy festival the other night because for all the faults of the country, Ireland still produces the best comedians in the world. He finished his routine with a story about a recent interview he did on Irish radio. He was asked what his view of the financial crisis was and what Ireland should do about the interest payments due to the European Central Bank.
His first thought was that things have fallen pretty badly in Ireland when comedians are being asked for their opinion on economic matters. But then again, economists haven’t been very clever in this area either. I read a lot of stuff on the web about the home country and it strikes me that if you put two Irish economists in a room, you would get at least 3 opinions.
David’s suggestion was that when the European bankers come looking for their cash, everyone in Dublin should start speaking Irish and pretend they can’t understand a word the Europeans are saying. It might sound silly, but it’s not as dumb as mortgaging the welfare of future generations to pay for the greed of bankers.
He also suggested that Ireland should hide all the helicopters, smootie makers and barista machines while the European Central Bank are in town. All the material possessions built up during the Celtic Tiger years are still there you know, even if some of them are starting to look scruffy around the edges.
It did make me think however, about my favourite Celtic Tiger moment. While I mock things back home, I have to admit that I was also part of it. I paid 12 euros for a focaccia loaf at a farmer’s market and threw most of it away after the first sandwich. I flew to Belgium once to see a band that was playing in Dublin the following week but on a night that clashed with a Soprano’s episode on TV. And I once bought my five year old niece a digital camera for Christmas that was smashed before the turkey was finished.
But I was a lightweight compared to a lot of people in Ireland. I only ever owned one house at a time and that was the one I lived in and I shunned the stock market. I was considered a fool by most people who saw the purpose of life as being the accumulation of as much material wealth as possible.
When I bought my first house, the tiger was just a cub, but a hungry one nonetheless. It was a new development and I got a call one day to ask me what electrical fittings I would like. It was 20 euro a socket and about 50 for a light fitting. I really only cared about where I could plug the telly in, so I had to depend on advice from the electrician who was showing me round.
I thought he’d try to convince me to install enough fittings to light up an aircraft carrier, as every addition was extra money in his pocket. But he was bored with the process and explained that he had four hundred houses to cover on my estate alone. And he had six other new estates to work on after that. He was making so much money during the building boom that he could afford to yawn as he accepted my cheque and climbed into his Mercedes.
A week or so later I got a call from the developer’s office, asking why I hadn’t paid the final instalment on the property. I tried to explain that the house wasn’t finished as it lacked some basic stuff like a roof. She practically screamed at me down the phone that there were fifty people on a waiting list who would happily take my house if I don’t stump up the cash immediately and the sad thing is, she was probably correct. At the time, garden sheds were selling for a fortune in Dublin.
It was a bubble of course and while anyone who wanted to could see that, it was rude to mention it in polite company. Everyone in Ireland took on the posture of those three monkeys who could hear no evil, see no evil nor speak no evil.
Besides, there was an element of enjoying the ride while we could. People started going to New York to do Christmas shopping. Bagel shops started opening all over the country, despite the fact that we were raised on sliced white bread. You still couldn’t get a decent curry or pasta, but that didn’t stop restaurants charging twice as much as you’d pay in London.
First Holy Communion was where you really saw the excess. Parental peer pressure is the hardest thing to fight. People started hiring helicopters to bring their seven year daughter to the church. They rented bouncy castles that were too big for their back garden and dressed their children in designer fashion straight from the cat walks of Milan.
Most of the madness however, was in the housing sector. People started buying numerous houses to rent out to Polish immigrants or to spend two weeks a year in on the West Coast. After the crash happened, I heard one woman on Irish radio complaining that due to salary cuts in the public service she could no longer afford the repayments on her Romanian holiday home. She cried as though her first born child had been snatched from her.
When it all went wrong, I have to confess to an element of smugness and a feeling of “I told you so”. Part of me hoped that the electrician I dealt with when I bought my house had invested all his money in Romanian apartments and was now sitting with a paper cup on O’Connell Bridge.
But I hope not. It’s time to make a new Ireland that concentrates on its good things, like its sense of humour and social life and to dispense with fumbling in a greasy till. Making David O’Doherty the Minister of Finance might be a good start.
His first thought was that things have fallen pretty badly in Ireland when comedians are being asked for their opinion on economic matters. But then again, economists haven’t been very clever in this area either. I read a lot of stuff on the web about the home country and it strikes me that if you put two Irish economists in a room, you would get at least 3 opinions.
David’s suggestion was that when the European bankers come looking for their cash, everyone in Dublin should start speaking Irish and pretend they can’t understand a word the Europeans are saying. It might sound silly, but it’s not as dumb as mortgaging the welfare of future generations to pay for the greed of bankers.
He also suggested that Ireland should hide all the helicopters, smootie makers and barista machines while the European Central Bank are in town. All the material possessions built up during the Celtic Tiger years are still there you know, even if some of them are starting to look scruffy around the edges.
It did make me think however, about my favourite Celtic Tiger moment. While I mock things back home, I have to admit that I was also part of it. I paid 12 euros for a focaccia loaf at a farmer’s market and threw most of it away after the first sandwich. I flew to Belgium once to see a band that was playing in Dublin the following week but on a night that clashed with a Soprano’s episode on TV. And I once bought my five year old niece a digital camera for Christmas that was smashed before the turkey was finished.
But I was a lightweight compared to a lot of people in Ireland. I only ever owned one house at a time and that was the one I lived in and I shunned the stock market. I was considered a fool by most people who saw the purpose of life as being the accumulation of as much material wealth as possible.
When I bought my first house, the tiger was just a cub, but a hungry one nonetheless. It was a new development and I got a call one day to ask me what electrical fittings I would like. It was 20 euro a socket and about 50 for a light fitting. I really only cared about where I could plug the telly in, so I had to depend on advice from the electrician who was showing me round.
I thought he’d try to convince me to install enough fittings to light up an aircraft carrier, as every addition was extra money in his pocket. But he was bored with the process and explained that he had four hundred houses to cover on my estate alone. And he had six other new estates to work on after that. He was making so much money during the building boom that he could afford to yawn as he accepted my cheque and climbed into his Mercedes.
A week or so later I got a call from the developer’s office, asking why I hadn’t paid the final instalment on the property. I tried to explain that the house wasn’t finished as it lacked some basic stuff like a roof. She practically screamed at me down the phone that there were fifty people on a waiting list who would happily take my house if I don’t stump up the cash immediately and the sad thing is, she was probably correct. At the time, garden sheds were selling for a fortune in Dublin.
It was a bubble of course and while anyone who wanted to could see that, it was rude to mention it in polite company. Everyone in Ireland took on the posture of those three monkeys who could hear no evil, see no evil nor speak no evil.
Besides, there was an element of enjoying the ride while we could. People started going to New York to do Christmas shopping. Bagel shops started opening all over the country, despite the fact that we were raised on sliced white bread. You still couldn’t get a decent curry or pasta, but that didn’t stop restaurants charging twice as much as you’d pay in London.
First Holy Communion was where you really saw the excess. Parental peer pressure is the hardest thing to fight. People started hiring helicopters to bring their seven year daughter to the church. They rented bouncy castles that were too big for their back garden and dressed their children in designer fashion straight from the cat walks of Milan.
Most of the madness however, was in the housing sector. People started buying numerous houses to rent out to Polish immigrants or to spend two weeks a year in on the West Coast. After the crash happened, I heard one woman on Irish radio complaining that due to salary cuts in the public service she could no longer afford the repayments on her Romanian holiday home. She cried as though her first born child had been snatched from her.
When it all went wrong, I have to confess to an element of smugness and a feeling of “I told you so”. Part of me hoped that the electrician I dealt with when I bought my house had invested all his money in Romanian apartments and was now sitting with a paper cup on O’Connell Bridge.
But I hope not. It’s time to make a new Ireland that concentrates on its good things, like its sense of humour and social life and to dispense with fumbling in a greasy till. Making David O’Doherty the Minister of Finance might be a good start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)