We never got to find out his name, but he terrorised us for two days, so let’s call him Osama.
It was a beautiful moonlit night when we arrived in Oakura in the winterless North in New Zealand.
It was the first night of our honeymoon and after a few days of living it up like teenagers, it was time to take things easy. The priest at our wedding had upset some of the congregation by making reference to how our nuptials involved two people in “mid-life”. I wasn’t particularly bothered to be honest. I’ve been called worse and it is a statement of fact after all. The complaints came mainly from people older than us because if we’re in mid life, where does that place them?
So in keeping with our mature status, we avoided the party venues of Hawaii and Hong Kong for our honeymoon and instead rented a beach house in a little village 30km from the main road. Serenity was our objective.
We arrived late at night and had to navigate the odd Kiwi tradition of leaving keys in obscure places to the point where gaining access to the building you have rented takes on the appearance of an Agatha Christie mystery. Keys in hand, we finally pulled into the driveway of our dream getaway.
Osama met us as we climbed out of our car. He was unkempt and had clearly seen better days. His coat was ragged but hinted that it had once been a noble blue and his stomach suggested that he had wined and dined mightily before falling on hard times.
Now he was reduced to begging and like the orphans of Bombay, he wasn’t very tactful about it. I’m made of sterner stuff however and I brushed past him to carry our bags inside. Undeterred, he tapped at the glass door as if demanding entry. We quickly shut the curtains and tried to ignore him and when his plaintiff pleas became louder, we simply turned up the volume on the TV.
Osama wasn’t going to give in so easily. He waited until we went to bed and then positioned himself beneath our window to ensure that we’d be awake all night. That’s not an uncommon occurrence on the first night of a honeymoon, but it wasn’t so pleasant in our case. We tried throwing buckets of water over him but that would only encourage him to come back for more.
It was clear that he never slept and his moaning went on until we rose half dead the next morning. Enquiries with the neighbours led us to understand that he was a serial offender who preyed on the good nature of the visitors to the holiday home we were staying in. The lack of a good night’s sleep had tested our generosity however and we were not the mood to give him the time of day. The neighbours assured us that the authorities had been notified and that Osama would be picked up that afternoon.
We went sight seeing, safe in the knowledge that a good night’s sleep awaited us. We returned as dusk was setting in over the Bay of Islands. We stood on the beach outside our holiday home to enjoy the full moon as it glistened over the pacific. Then we heard the now familiar cry. We turned and Osama was standing behind us, mocking us for our naivety yet still demanding our attention and succour. I chased him away but he returned when we were sleeping before once again setting out to destroy our peace. This time he waited until 3am before beginning his piercing song of lament and loneliness from beneath our bedroom window.
By this stage our thoughts had turned to murder. A night time pursuit ensued when we chased him around the garden. He took refuge in the shed and we quickly bolted the outside door and high fived each other in the belief that we had solved the problem. Thirty minutes later however, he arrived back at our window to brag that a mere padlock was not going to hold him back.
We despaired and resigned ourselves to another restless night. Osama had beaten us and to make things worse, Osama was a cat!
I’ve never liked cats, I must admit. I’ve often thought that they are the hand tool of the devil with those beady little eyes and lazy mannerisms. But when you’ve been haunted by one for two days, your thoughts go from dislike to outright hatred. In the sleepless hours of the night that were initiated by his whining, we worked on the three best ways to kill a cat.
A friend in Melbourne told me that the best way to get rid of possums is to leave out a saucer of milk with two Disprin dissolved in the liquid. She cautioned however, that this would also rid you of next-door’s cat. In our case, we reasoned that it would rid us of Osama and also take care of any possums that were knocking around the neighbourhood.
My second suggestion was to ask my lady wife to hold the cat on the ground while I reversed over him with the large four by four vehicle we have borrowed for this trip. This had the added risk however, that I might also run over the arms of my loved one, which is not a good way to kick off married life.
Our final thought was to drive him 20km out of town before dumping him at the side of the road. It was pointed out to me however, that the New Zealand bush is unforgiving and that Osama would either die a slow painful death from hunger or be torn apart by a wild animal. After the previous two nights, either option seemed fine to me but my bride blushed at this cruel and unusual punishment.
In the end, we managed to get him into a cardboard box and took him to the SPCA. They use injections rather than bullets, but with some luck Osama the cat will be meeting the same faith as that other Osama, some time tonight. We slept in peace.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Working for the Yankee Dollar- Part 6
A bottle of Red wine and four cans of beer is no way to prepare for a big date but Frank never lived by the rules. His life was true tragedy or true ecstasy and there was no room for passengers in between.
It was Sunday. He'd given up on God years ago after realising that for all the time he believed in God, God didn't actually believe in him. So the day would be long. Time to think, time to dream, time to talk yourself into being maniacally depressed. He left two hours before the date. Was this keenness on the boy’s part or a desire to work up Dutch courage in the local pub?
One advantage of working for an International Bank was the number of international women who also worked there. The Celtic Tiger was booming and Europeans flocked to Dublin like shoppers on the first day of January sales. Frank found himself working beside a gorgeous German girl called Yvonne and at Friday night drinks he had worked up the courage to ask her out on a date.
He made it to the pub ten minutes early. A long bar draped on one side to hide it’s narrowness. Single men hogged the high stools, gazing into their bottles of Heineken to avoid eye contact. Were they like him, awaiting the unknown? Or had they darker reasons for seeking the company of the old hoary bastard called beer?
She turned up fashionably late and they sat at the bar. She drank red wine, the music was 1930’s European Jazz, the art deco was French and his beer (trying desperately to impress) was German. But his charm and confidence were definitely Mullingar, circa 1982. You can take the man out of the bog, but you can’t take the whimpering stupidity out of the man.
They talked freely for two hours, even managing to have a conversation about “people who fucked us up emotionally” without Frank having to mention the person who did fuck him up emotionally. He knew he was talking too much though. Knew he wasn’t making her laugh enough. Knew that beer and football are probably not top of women’s conversation topics, but his nervousness led him to ramble on anyway. “Oh wait till I tell you about the time I got pissed in Munich and puked all over a Policeman’s shoes” is probably not the best chat up line in history but there are some nights when it has to do.
The wine flowed and the conversation mellowed. Yvonne mentioned Colin; a friend of Frank’s that she had met the night before. Frank sensed competition and like a coiled animal he accessed all the possibilities. So he alluded to Colin being a closet Homosexual. Straight away he knew this wasn’t a smart move. Not only is Colin a good mate but an old theory of Frank’s was quickly proven. Women are actually attracted to Homosexuals.
Yvonne kept looking at Frank’s watch, which either meant she greatly admired the garishly yellow timepiece he had recently picked up in Duty Free, or she wanted to go home. He wasn’t taking any chances, so he offered to share a taxi back to her place and then he would walk home from there. Cunning plan apart from the fact that he lived about two miles away and it was actually shorter for him to walk straight home from the pub. But if he was going to endure the disadvantage of facing a German sense of humour, he was at least going to enjoy her lack of knowledge of Dublin geography. On the way there he posed the big question, “would you like to go for dinner some evening?”
Now this was a dangerous question for many reasons. Women don’t like eating in front of strange men. If they do, they order a salad and then nag you into ordering a desert before saying “can I just try a spoonful?” before cleaning it off like a tramp in a soup kitchen. And it was late on Sunday and he was quickly realising that he had picked the worst night of the week for a date and was now compounding it by asking for the worst sort of follow up date.
He figured he would count the seconds between the question and the response and take it from there. 1, she’s thinking about it. 2, maybe she didn’t understand it. 3, the excitement is obviously too much for her. 4, if she doesn’t answer soon I’ll pretend it was all a joke. She answered on 5. “That would be nice” which was probably the best he could hope for in the circumstances. But he felt that there was something in that pause. Words unsaid, uncertainty. They were two players now, reading nuances into each other’s speech.
Back at her place, they climbed the four flights of stairs to her flat. Frank tried to look cool while fighting off a heart attack. Dan the flatmate was up and in no mood to vacate the living room. Frank and Dan had worked together previously and he was anxious to catch up on old times. They drank their coffee and watched Dan do his ironing. Sometimes big first dates come to this.
Frank figured he’d cut his losses at this stage. The scene was getting a little suffocating and anyway he had a two-mile hike to look forward to. At the front door they hugged (not Dan, thankfully he stayed in the living room). But Frank’s mind was working overtime at this stage. What sort of hug was it? See, couples are well matched if when they hug each other, they instinctively move to the correct side of the head and their ears interlock. And this wasn’t that sort of hug. But he left not knowing if he was the one who put in no energy. If he was the one who couldn’t wait to get out the door.
He walked home in the late evening drizzle. The streets seemed filled with couples. He seemed filled with doubt. Something had gone wrong at the end of the night and he couldn’t figure out if it was him that threw in the negative vibe.
But maybe he’ll ring her anyway. I mean all that can happen is that he will be humiliated. The alternative is never knowing if this beautiful, interesting girl really wants you. Humiliation or never knowing? What delicious questions stem from love and life and time?
It was Sunday. He'd given up on God years ago after realising that for all the time he believed in God, God didn't actually believe in him. So the day would be long. Time to think, time to dream, time to talk yourself into being maniacally depressed. He left two hours before the date. Was this keenness on the boy’s part or a desire to work up Dutch courage in the local pub?
One advantage of working for an International Bank was the number of international women who also worked there. The Celtic Tiger was booming and Europeans flocked to Dublin like shoppers on the first day of January sales. Frank found himself working beside a gorgeous German girl called Yvonne and at Friday night drinks he had worked up the courage to ask her out on a date.
He made it to the pub ten minutes early. A long bar draped on one side to hide it’s narrowness. Single men hogged the high stools, gazing into their bottles of Heineken to avoid eye contact. Were they like him, awaiting the unknown? Or had they darker reasons for seeking the company of the old hoary bastard called beer?
She turned up fashionably late and they sat at the bar. She drank red wine, the music was 1930’s European Jazz, the art deco was French and his beer (trying desperately to impress) was German. But his charm and confidence were definitely Mullingar, circa 1982. You can take the man out of the bog, but you can’t take the whimpering stupidity out of the man.
They talked freely for two hours, even managing to have a conversation about “people who fucked us up emotionally” without Frank having to mention the person who did fuck him up emotionally. He knew he was talking too much though. Knew he wasn’t making her laugh enough. Knew that beer and football are probably not top of women’s conversation topics, but his nervousness led him to ramble on anyway. “Oh wait till I tell you about the time I got pissed in Munich and puked all over a Policeman’s shoes” is probably not the best chat up line in history but there are some nights when it has to do.
The wine flowed and the conversation mellowed. Yvonne mentioned Colin; a friend of Frank’s that she had met the night before. Frank sensed competition and like a coiled animal he accessed all the possibilities. So he alluded to Colin being a closet Homosexual. Straight away he knew this wasn’t a smart move. Not only is Colin a good mate but an old theory of Frank’s was quickly proven. Women are actually attracted to Homosexuals.
Yvonne kept looking at Frank’s watch, which either meant she greatly admired the garishly yellow timepiece he had recently picked up in Duty Free, or she wanted to go home. He wasn’t taking any chances, so he offered to share a taxi back to her place and then he would walk home from there. Cunning plan apart from the fact that he lived about two miles away and it was actually shorter for him to walk straight home from the pub. But if he was going to endure the disadvantage of facing a German sense of humour, he was at least going to enjoy her lack of knowledge of Dublin geography. On the way there he posed the big question, “would you like to go for dinner some evening?”
Now this was a dangerous question for many reasons. Women don’t like eating in front of strange men. If they do, they order a salad and then nag you into ordering a desert before saying “can I just try a spoonful?” before cleaning it off like a tramp in a soup kitchen. And it was late on Sunday and he was quickly realising that he had picked the worst night of the week for a date and was now compounding it by asking for the worst sort of follow up date.
He figured he would count the seconds between the question and the response and take it from there. 1, she’s thinking about it. 2, maybe she didn’t understand it. 3, the excitement is obviously too much for her. 4, if she doesn’t answer soon I’ll pretend it was all a joke. She answered on 5. “That would be nice” which was probably the best he could hope for in the circumstances. But he felt that there was something in that pause. Words unsaid, uncertainty. They were two players now, reading nuances into each other’s speech.
Back at her place, they climbed the four flights of stairs to her flat. Frank tried to look cool while fighting off a heart attack. Dan the flatmate was up and in no mood to vacate the living room. Frank and Dan had worked together previously and he was anxious to catch up on old times. They drank their coffee and watched Dan do his ironing. Sometimes big first dates come to this.
Frank figured he’d cut his losses at this stage. The scene was getting a little suffocating and anyway he had a two-mile hike to look forward to. At the front door they hugged (not Dan, thankfully he stayed in the living room). But Frank’s mind was working overtime at this stage. What sort of hug was it? See, couples are well matched if when they hug each other, they instinctively move to the correct side of the head and their ears interlock. And this wasn’t that sort of hug. But he left not knowing if he was the one who put in no energy. If he was the one who couldn’t wait to get out the door.
He walked home in the late evening drizzle. The streets seemed filled with couples. He seemed filled with doubt. Something had gone wrong at the end of the night and he couldn’t figure out if it was him that threw in the negative vibe.
But maybe he’ll ring her anyway. I mean all that can happen is that he will be humiliated. The alternative is never knowing if this beautiful, interesting girl really wants you. Humiliation or never knowing? What delicious questions stem from love and life and time?
Friday, 29 April 2011
A Tale of Two Weddings
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
How Social Media killed Journalism
“Bad Result, but we didn’t play well”, Rio Ferdinand tweeted. Not the most insightful piece of journalism I thought, yet it was widely reported. On the day Mr Ferdinand (sometime Manchester United defender and media darling) updated his twitter account, his football club where in shut down mode.
Their petulant manager had thrown his toys out of the pram the day before and ordered everyone at the club to shun the media. For those of you who aren’t slaves to the whore that is English football, I should point out that Manchester United are the self styled “Biggest club in the world” and if the woman who cleans the toilets at their monstrosity of a stadium was suffering with an itchy foot, it would normally result in a press conference attended to by the cream of the world’s media.
So a media blackout caused panic and journalists did what is now their default action. They turned to the world wide web to fill the vacuum. They looked at amateur blogs to see what the ordinary man was saying about this drastic situation. Journalists condemn blogging as a dilution of their great art, even though they are happy to dip in on blogs when it suits them. After that, they looked up twitter, where the famous share their inane thoughts for the benefit of people with no lives but access to a smart phone.
And there they found Ferdinand’s simplistic message and they parsed and dissected it, as though it was the Wisdom of Solomon.
I wanted to be a journalist when I left school. I had my paperwork all ready and had been offered a place in the College of Journalism. Faith alas intervened and through a lack of financial resources and ambition I ended up in Accountancy.
My desire to write had been nourished by teenage years spent buried in investigative magazines. This was an era of El Salvador, the Falklands War, the dark years of the Northern Ireland and the misery and corruption of 80’s Irish life. It was a boom time for journalists like John Pilger and Robert Fisk to scrape the underbelly of world affairs. I loved it and desperately wanted to be like them - travelling the world and uncovering secrets that the powerful don’t want us to know about.
I had no interest in the mundane side of journalism. Reporting on council meetings and car accidents and writing obituaries for people you’d never met. I imagined that I’d finish college and be brought on to the editorial staff of Newsweek and given the job of discovering the secret links between Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Royal Family.
Though I spend my life now buried in spreadsheets and cash flow statements, I don’t regret the missed opportunity I had as a teenager. For journalism is a dishonoured profession now. From the outside it seems that they don’t even have to leave their offices anymore. They can just sit at a PC and surf all the social media and let the story come to them.
The biggest story in Melbourne this summer is the St. Kilda schoolgirl saga, which is ironic because the lady involved is neither from St. Kilda nor a schoolgirl. She is a 17 year old who allegedly slept with a number of footballers and more recently caught a football manager in a very public honey trap. What makes the story interesting is her skilful use of social media. She initially published nude pictures of footballers on Facebook and later teased the drooling public by drip-feeding new revelations on twitter.
The story culminated in the honey trap. She contacted a trashy newspaper and told them how she had been in contact via text message with the 47-year-old football manager. The paper booked her into a hotel room and told her to invite the manager round. When he turned up they were ready to photograph him going in and coming out of the hotel.
He has now been sacked while the girl has signed six figure contracts with TV stations and magazines. It is life Jim, but not as we know it.
Not only does this show that journalists are now been led by the nose by Facebook and twitter, but when things get a bit slow they end of creating the story themselves. Why wait for news to happen when you can install a 17-year girl in a hotel room and watch the news develop in front of you.
I hanker back to the old days when journalists’ doorstepped celebrities and politicians to get real quotes. Now you are more likely to read, “Charlie Sheen could not be reached for comment, but he did say on twitter….”.
And it’s not just the trashy populist press that does this. The big papers have become just as lazy. Their big story in the last few months has been the Wikileak’s revelations, which looked like it would be the biggest scoop since Watergate until you actually read them. Finding out that the Bush administration thought Kim Il Jong was a nutter is hardly earth shattering and the ease with which the information was obtained (a memory stick and a naïve American serviceman) was disproportionate the magnitude of the story.
Investigative journalism should be about shady meetings in underground car parks and documents smuggled out of prisons in body cavities. That’s why I felt disappointed when I saw my old hero, John Pilger, on the steps of a London courthouse defending Julian Assange. I don’t dispute the politics of the situation or that Wikileaks is pointing a well-deserved finger at the powers that be. But they have cheapened journalism at the same time by saying that all information should be publically assessable. If that’s the case there will be no room left for the humble gumshoe to uncover that which is hidden from us.
Perhaps it was just as well then that I became an Accountant and not a Journalist. We merely caused the Global Financial Crisis, but that my friend is a completely different story. Tune in next week for more revelations.
Their petulant manager had thrown his toys out of the pram the day before and ordered everyone at the club to shun the media. For those of you who aren’t slaves to the whore that is English football, I should point out that Manchester United are the self styled “Biggest club in the world” and if the woman who cleans the toilets at their monstrosity of a stadium was suffering with an itchy foot, it would normally result in a press conference attended to by the cream of the world’s media.
So a media blackout caused panic and journalists did what is now their default action. They turned to the world wide web to fill the vacuum. They looked at amateur blogs to see what the ordinary man was saying about this drastic situation. Journalists condemn blogging as a dilution of their great art, even though they are happy to dip in on blogs when it suits them. After that, they looked up twitter, where the famous share their inane thoughts for the benefit of people with no lives but access to a smart phone.
And there they found Ferdinand’s simplistic message and they parsed and dissected it, as though it was the Wisdom of Solomon.
I wanted to be a journalist when I left school. I had my paperwork all ready and had been offered a place in the College of Journalism. Faith alas intervened and through a lack of financial resources and ambition I ended up in Accountancy.
My desire to write had been nourished by teenage years spent buried in investigative magazines. This was an era of El Salvador, the Falklands War, the dark years of the Northern Ireland and the misery and corruption of 80’s Irish life. It was a boom time for journalists like John Pilger and Robert Fisk to scrape the underbelly of world affairs. I loved it and desperately wanted to be like them - travelling the world and uncovering secrets that the powerful don’t want us to know about.
I had no interest in the mundane side of journalism. Reporting on council meetings and car accidents and writing obituaries for people you’d never met. I imagined that I’d finish college and be brought on to the editorial staff of Newsweek and given the job of discovering the secret links between Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Royal Family.
Though I spend my life now buried in spreadsheets and cash flow statements, I don’t regret the missed opportunity I had as a teenager. For journalism is a dishonoured profession now. From the outside it seems that they don’t even have to leave their offices anymore. They can just sit at a PC and surf all the social media and let the story come to them.
The biggest story in Melbourne this summer is the St. Kilda schoolgirl saga, which is ironic because the lady involved is neither from St. Kilda nor a schoolgirl. She is a 17 year old who allegedly slept with a number of footballers and more recently caught a football manager in a very public honey trap. What makes the story interesting is her skilful use of social media. She initially published nude pictures of footballers on Facebook and later teased the drooling public by drip-feeding new revelations on twitter.
The story culminated in the honey trap. She contacted a trashy newspaper and told them how she had been in contact via text message with the 47-year-old football manager. The paper booked her into a hotel room and told her to invite the manager round. When he turned up they were ready to photograph him going in and coming out of the hotel.
He has now been sacked while the girl has signed six figure contracts with TV stations and magazines. It is life Jim, but not as we know it.
Not only does this show that journalists are now been led by the nose by Facebook and twitter, but when things get a bit slow they end of creating the story themselves. Why wait for news to happen when you can install a 17-year girl in a hotel room and watch the news develop in front of you.
I hanker back to the old days when journalists’ doorstepped celebrities and politicians to get real quotes. Now you are more likely to read, “Charlie Sheen could not be reached for comment, but he did say on twitter….”.
And it’s not just the trashy populist press that does this. The big papers have become just as lazy. Their big story in the last few months has been the Wikileak’s revelations, which looked like it would be the biggest scoop since Watergate until you actually read them. Finding out that the Bush administration thought Kim Il Jong was a nutter is hardly earth shattering and the ease with which the information was obtained (a memory stick and a naïve American serviceman) was disproportionate the magnitude of the story.
Investigative journalism should be about shady meetings in underground car parks and documents smuggled out of prisons in body cavities. That’s why I felt disappointed when I saw my old hero, John Pilger, on the steps of a London courthouse defending Julian Assange. I don’t dispute the politics of the situation or that Wikileaks is pointing a well-deserved finger at the powers that be. But they have cheapened journalism at the same time by saying that all information should be publically assessable. If that’s the case there will be no room left for the humble gumshoe to uncover that which is hidden from us.
Perhaps it was just as well then that I became an Accountant and not a Journalist. We merely caused the Global Financial Crisis, but that my friend is a completely different story. Tune in next week for more revelations.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Tribute to Christchurch
I first visited Christchurch in 1995 and fell in love with the City straight away. I arrived on a Sunday night, four days into a six-month trip around the world that was supposed to exhaust my travel bug. Unfortunately, when I saw how fantastic the other side of the world was, I couldn’t help coming back.
I’d been through Hong Kong and the steamy suburbs of Auckland, so the cool air and cleanliness of the place was the first thing I noticed. The other thing that surprised me was that every suburb and street seemed to be named after an area of London. Imagination was obviously not a strong point among the original settlers. I stayed in Beckenham, which was also the last suburb in London that I had lived in and settled onto a mate’s couch for the duration of my stay.
On my first full day, I took a walk into town. The Cathedral was the first thing I noticed. We Northern Hemisphere people think we have a monopoly on beautiful old buildings, but Christchurch could challenge that. The Cathedral was magnificent and stood as a centre point for the City. When I saw the ruins of it on TV after last week’s earthquake, I cried. What would Milan do without the Duomo, what would London do without St Paul’s and ironically given the subject of this blog, what would Dublin do without Christchurch?
Christchurch was a beautiful city. It seems strange and cruel to talk about it in the past tense. I have so many fond memories of the place that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. It’s the first place I ever spent Christmas away from home, it’s the first place I ever used the Internet, the first place I ever got a number one crew cut and the first place I ever watched a cricket match (which sparked an interest that led to me jumping around the living room this week when Ireland beat England in the cricket world cup).
And now, the City is ruined, a victim of the world and nature, which at least lets humans off the hook, because we’re the blame for everything else.
On my second day I headed to Lyttelton Harbour in a vain attempt to find a fishing boat that a sea captain had told me about the night before. He promised a mate and I a free trip to the West Coast of New Zealand in return for some unspecified duties. When we turned up at the harbour next day we found out that the fishing boat we sought had sunk five years previously and we were either talking to a ghost or a prankster. For our own ego, we decided it was a ghost and the legend of the Mary Jane will be made into a movie one day, with Johnny Depp playing me.
The cricket match came later when I made one of my many visits to New Zealand. I was there with my mate Jez and we headed to Jade Stadium to see the Kiwis take on South Africa in a one-day match that kicked off at 11am. We found out that the bar only sold beer in units of six and given the time of day we figured that one six pack between us would be sufficient before lunch. When New Zealand was bowled out for 220, we hightailed into town for lunch at the Loaded Hog, a venue that served the best Nachos south of Mexico City.
We had a couple of pints there before heading back to the stadium for the South African innings. It was a long walk to our seats from the beer tent and we wanted to minimise our travel back and forth and so Jez asked when did they stop selling beer.
“The 35th Over” answered the young bar tender.
“Is that the start of the 35th over or the end?” replied Jez. The bar tender stared at him for a second before saying, “you know I’ve been working here for seven years and nobody has ever asked that question, but now that you mention it, it’s the start.”
As we were both Accountants, we calculated that 18 beers between us would see us to the end of the match. Unfortunately, South Africa only took 43 overs to win and we soon found ourselves in an empty stadium with 12 warm cans of beer under our seats. Didn’t stop us drinking them, mind you and we spent the last hour staring at the rising moon and noting how beautiful the stars were. That’s what drinking outdoors does to you.
On my last trip, I spent a lot of time in the old university, which is now an arts centre and marvelled at how cosmopolitan it was for a small city so far from the rest of the world. It had reinvented itself from being an outpost supporting the farming industry to a city of culture where art galleries nestled beside flower-strewn parks and the Avon River added an air of calmness.
Christchurch now will have to reinvent itself again, to rise phoenix like from the ashes. I’m sure it will, we just have to realise it will never be the same as it was before and hope that it can be better. I met my first kiwi in 1987 and I’ve been drawn to them ever since. They have an attitude to life that I admire and seem to have a bond with the Irish that goes beyond a love of beer. One of my best friends lives in Christchurch and he sums up that kiwi spirit. Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself, he’d pat me on the back and tell me to “harden up”.
Him and his family are safe at least and I’m sure he’s doing his best to harden up in circumstances that would try the patience of a saint. For his sake and for all the people of Christchurch, I’ll say a prayer tonight. Towards tomorrow and a better day.
I’d been through Hong Kong and the steamy suburbs of Auckland, so the cool air and cleanliness of the place was the first thing I noticed. The other thing that surprised me was that every suburb and street seemed to be named after an area of London. Imagination was obviously not a strong point among the original settlers. I stayed in Beckenham, which was also the last suburb in London that I had lived in and settled onto a mate’s couch for the duration of my stay.
On my first full day, I took a walk into town. The Cathedral was the first thing I noticed. We Northern Hemisphere people think we have a monopoly on beautiful old buildings, but Christchurch could challenge that. The Cathedral was magnificent and stood as a centre point for the City. When I saw the ruins of it on TV after last week’s earthquake, I cried. What would Milan do without the Duomo, what would London do without St Paul’s and ironically given the subject of this blog, what would Dublin do without Christchurch?
Christchurch was a beautiful city. It seems strange and cruel to talk about it in the past tense. I have so many fond memories of the place that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. It’s the first place I ever spent Christmas away from home, it’s the first place I ever used the Internet, the first place I ever got a number one crew cut and the first place I ever watched a cricket match (which sparked an interest that led to me jumping around the living room this week when Ireland beat England in the cricket world cup).
And now, the City is ruined, a victim of the world and nature, which at least lets humans off the hook, because we’re the blame for everything else.
On my second day I headed to Lyttelton Harbour in a vain attempt to find a fishing boat that a sea captain had told me about the night before. He promised a mate and I a free trip to the West Coast of New Zealand in return for some unspecified duties. When we turned up at the harbour next day we found out that the fishing boat we sought had sunk five years previously and we were either talking to a ghost or a prankster. For our own ego, we decided it was a ghost and the legend of the Mary Jane will be made into a movie one day, with Johnny Depp playing me.
The cricket match came later when I made one of my many visits to New Zealand. I was there with my mate Jez and we headed to Jade Stadium to see the Kiwis take on South Africa in a one-day match that kicked off at 11am. We found out that the bar only sold beer in units of six and given the time of day we figured that one six pack between us would be sufficient before lunch. When New Zealand was bowled out for 220, we hightailed into town for lunch at the Loaded Hog, a venue that served the best Nachos south of Mexico City.
We had a couple of pints there before heading back to the stadium for the South African innings. It was a long walk to our seats from the beer tent and we wanted to minimise our travel back and forth and so Jez asked when did they stop selling beer.
“The 35th Over” answered the young bar tender.
“Is that the start of the 35th over or the end?” replied Jez. The bar tender stared at him for a second before saying, “you know I’ve been working here for seven years and nobody has ever asked that question, but now that you mention it, it’s the start.”
As we were both Accountants, we calculated that 18 beers between us would see us to the end of the match. Unfortunately, South Africa only took 43 overs to win and we soon found ourselves in an empty stadium with 12 warm cans of beer under our seats. Didn’t stop us drinking them, mind you and we spent the last hour staring at the rising moon and noting how beautiful the stars were. That’s what drinking outdoors does to you.
On my last trip, I spent a lot of time in the old university, which is now an arts centre and marvelled at how cosmopolitan it was for a small city so far from the rest of the world. It had reinvented itself from being an outpost supporting the farming industry to a city of culture where art galleries nestled beside flower-strewn parks and the Avon River added an air of calmness.
Christchurch now will have to reinvent itself again, to rise phoenix like from the ashes. I’m sure it will, we just have to realise it will never be the same as it was before and hope that it can be better. I met my first kiwi in 1987 and I’ve been drawn to them ever since. They have an attitude to life that I admire and seem to have a bond with the Irish that goes beyond a love of beer. One of my best friends lives in Christchurch and he sums up that kiwi spirit. Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself, he’d pat me on the back and tell me to “harden up”.
Him and his family are safe at least and I’m sure he’s doing his best to harden up in circumstances that would try the patience of a saint. For his sake and for all the people of Christchurch, I’ll say a prayer tonight. Towards tomorrow and a better day.
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