Week four at the antenatal classes and I’m struggling to stay awake to be honest. It’s three and half-hours in a warm room at the end of a long working day. If nothing else it is getting us used to the first months of the kids life, when trying to stay awake will be a daily challenge.
The instructor tries to make it interactive, but as we’re all first time parents, nobody wants to make a fool of themselves by giving a stupid answer. I’d been on a training course at work the week before, which was not dissimilar to the baby class I now found myself in. Both were run by slightly smug individuals who spent most of the time asking patently obvious questions which nobody wanted to answer for fear of becoming the class pet. And both were training us for a scenario that would involve forgetting everything you’ve heard during training.
The only problem with these courses (both Baby and work related) is that they involve long periods of silence while the instructor waits for an answer to her longwinded questions. In most cases, she asks questions relating to the topic she is about to explain. This is pretty redundant and reminds me of the dark days of school when the teacher would ask “What is the capital of Poland?”, just before he was due to tell us anyway. That’s why many of the kids from my school went on to be experts at quizzes.
One of the questions she asked was “Who knows what the three day blues are”? After an age, I thought I’d venture a response. “Is it a music festival in Adelaide”?
All the blokes laughed but the women weren’t impressed. Later on we got on to the subject of breastfeeding. “How long does the average woman breastfeed for”? We were asked. Again the silence was deafening, so I answered “surely you’d do it until the baby was full”.
At that stage I think I was marked down as a troublemaker. You’re supposed to take these things seriously after all. There are male midwives apparently, but our classes were determinedly female. Childbirth is their thing after all and we men are there for support. Kind of like the little guy who runs onto the football pitch with a bottle of water and a sponge when somebody goes down injured. Nobody pays in to see that guy. They are there for the footballers.
On the third class, we got a tour of the hospital, which at least gave some attention to the guys. We were shown where to park when we rush the wife to hospital. How much it costs to park while she’s in labour (an arm and a leg) and where the canteen is. The birthing suites are nicely modern and well equipped and had enough gadgets to keep the men interested. Most of us were drawn to the TV and fridge. It made the space look a hotel room. The fridge apparently is provided so that we can bring in cooling packs and food for the expected 8 hour ordeal (only the woman giving birth gets fed by the hospital).
You could tell that all the blokes wanted to know if you could bring in a six-pack but nobody had the guts to ask.
They showed us where the baby will be weighed and measured and where the umbilical cord is cut. Many aspects of this whole fatherhood thing are coming as a shock to me. Not least is the fact that the modern man is supposed to take a pair of scissors to the cord connecting the baby to the placenta. I went white at the mention of this process. I’m an Accountant who feels faint when I get a paper cut. If I wanted to be a surgeon or a butcher, I would have trained to be one.
My squeamishness wasn’t helped when the midwife mentioned that the cord is like nylon rope and you had to give it a good snap with the scissors. When she said that some men liked to wait until the cord had stopped pulsing, I nearly passed out. I can see that I’m going to have to work on my resilience over the coming weeks.
The lowlight of the tour was when they took us to the post natal ward and explained that the mother and baby would only spend one night there. So if the baby is born at 10pm, we’ll be on the mean streets of Melbourne by 6pm the following evening with a small bundle of joy and two inexperienced parents.
But that’s life and I doubt if we’re the first parents to find ourselves in that position. The seven billion people clinging to this mortal planet all got here through similar means. Most people cope and that is what we will do.
We bought our first set of nappies last week and have started to think about all the other things we’ll need. Last Sunday we went to a Baby Expo, which was just about the most soul-destroying thing I’ve ever done. Most of the displays were designed to target your guilt or vanity. There were cots that cost as much as a small car, prams that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Grand Prix circuit and a bewildering assortment of gadgets designed to monitor a baby’s temperature and heartbeat. It seems that the modern nursery is better equipped than an intensive care unit.
After we passed a stall selling aromatherapy treatments for infants, we were hit by a sudden weariness and sat down to enjoy a coffee. My eyes were drawn to a strange green figure on a stage to my right. It turned out to be Dorothy the Dinosaur. She danced and sang a tinny tune and the kids screamed their approval. Somehow I think I’ll be seeing a lot of Dorothy in the future. I can only hope that she knows a few Leonard Cohen songs.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Waiting for the Stork Part 1
Helen runs our local breastfeeding class and is a slightly intimidating lady. “Do you have any experience with babies?” was her first question.
“Well, I used to be one” I said. “I was a lot fitter back then, mind you. I weighed 9 pounds, 4 ounces but I’ve been stacking it on ever since”.
She didn’t laugh. Years’ working as a midwife obviously numbs you to baby jokes. I was going to try my old favourite “I like babies but couldn’t eat a whole one” but thought better of it and slunk away to find a place among the other parent’s to be. It was a motley crew it must be said. Two lesbian couples who looked a little smug. This is probably due to the fact that they have double the output capacity of the other couples. Two women who arrived on their own and muttered darkly whenever they mentioned their absent husbands and just three blokes (including myself) who had turned up with their partners.
We were asked to introduce ourselves to the group and I had the honour of going first. “Despite my bulging tummy and man boobs”, I said. “I just want to point out that I’m not actually pregnant”.
The fat bloke two seats to my left glared at me and said “You’ve stolen my bloody line”.
I also mentioned that I’m Irish and breastfeeding is about as common there as ham sandwiches are in Israel. Helen looked at me as though I was a caveman and shook her head. I slunk back into my seat and buried my head in the handout we received at the start. The first thing I noticed was a glossy colour pamphlet with the heading “poo chart”. To my disappointment it contained nothing about a cuddly bear called Winnie, but had lots of pictures of excrement. I’m learning new things every day, but apparently it’s OK for a small child to have bright green poo, and they don’t even have to consume a bottle of Creme de Mente like their father does.
I now know what to expect when I open those 72 nappies that will be needed in the first week of juniors’ existence. To be honest, I’ll probably be more concerned about the condition of my own poo in that week as I don’t respond well to lack of sleep and a diet of takeaway food.
The class was pretty boring, until they introduced the live demonstration. Two women had brought along their little boys and we were expected to stand round in small groups and stare at their mammaries. I was a little uncomfortable. The last time I’d paid that much attention to boobies, outside of a loving relationship, was when I first stumbled upon a topless beach in Spain. I say stumbled, because I tripped over an elderly German tourist on a sun lounger while staring at somebody else.
The little boys were 4 and 8 months and the younger one fitted the breastfeeding stereotype that was in my head. It was brought to the feeding station and held there while he filled himself up. The older one was more mobile and he treated his Mother as more of a self service option. Every hour or so, he would crawl over to where she was sitting. He would then climb up and start unbuttoning her blouse. Pretty soon he’d be getting a mouth full while his Mother read a book. We were there to learn how to breastfeed but the thought struck me that she would actually have a harder job teaching her kid when to stop. If it’s that easy, why would you ever bother with the pureed vegetables that other kids are forced to eat?
Two weeks later, we went to our first ante natal class. I’ve been talking to a lot of Dads recently and one thing that always comes up is the horror movies that are shown at these classes. Thankfully, ours was more old school and the presenter decided to showcase her acting skills by playing out most of the action that would normally be seen on screen. This involved lots of moaning and face pulling that would not be out of place at a Pentecostal speaking in tongues festival.
The gathering here was much more conventional with equal numbers of Dads to Mums. Naturally, it focused on the females but we men did get the occasional mention. It’s our job to drive to the hospital (and home again two days later) and to be the chief forehead wiper and back masseuse. We are also expected to be strong and supportive, particularly during that point in labour when it is pointed out that all this pain is actually our fault.
In two weeks time, we get a tour of the hospital. Apparently these days, the delivery rooms are en suite with TVs and vending machines. We’re expecting an 18 hour process, so I might bring along a Box Set of the Sopranos. It’s all very different to when I was a nipper. Mammy won’t be lying down for the delivery it seems. These days you are encouraged to lie across a large exercise ball or to be on all fours. It all seems terribly undignified to me, but then there is very little dignity involved at the start of the baby making process either.
The first class was fun and it gave us a chance to meet other people in our area who are also close to becoming parents. We feel we are part of a club now that lets you into the secret of life. In a few weeks we will become responsible for a little person. To mould them and to teach them and to give them the confidence to set forth into this mad world.
But the thing I’m learning now is that this small child has so much to teach me. He or she will make me a Father and that’s the greatest gift I will ever receive.
“Well, I used to be one” I said. “I was a lot fitter back then, mind you. I weighed 9 pounds, 4 ounces but I’ve been stacking it on ever since”.
She didn’t laugh. Years’ working as a midwife obviously numbs you to baby jokes. I was going to try my old favourite “I like babies but couldn’t eat a whole one” but thought better of it and slunk away to find a place among the other parent’s to be. It was a motley crew it must be said. Two lesbian couples who looked a little smug. This is probably due to the fact that they have double the output capacity of the other couples. Two women who arrived on their own and muttered darkly whenever they mentioned their absent husbands and just three blokes (including myself) who had turned up with their partners.
We were asked to introduce ourselves to the group and I had the honour of going first. “Despite my bulging tummy and man boobs”, I said. “I just want to point out that I’m not actually pregnant”.
The fat bloke two seats to my left glared at me and said “You’ve stolen my bloody line”.
I also mentioned that I’m Irish and breastfeeding is about as common there as ham sandwiches are in Israel. Helen looked at me as though I was a caveman and shook her head. I slunk back into my seat and buried my head in the handout we received at the start. The first thing I noticed was a glossy colour pamphlet with the heading “poo chart”. To my disappointment it contained nothing about a cuddly bear called Winnie, but had lots of pictures of excrement. I’m learning new things every day, but apparently it’s OK for a small child to have bright green poo, and they don’t even have to consume a bottle of Creme de Mente like their father does.
I now know what to expect when I open those 72 nappies that will be needed in the first week of juniors’ existence. To be honest, I’ll probably be more concerned about the condition of my own poo in that week as I don’t respond well to lack of sleep and a diet of takeaway food.
The class was pretty boring, until they introduced the live demonstration. Two women had brought along their little boys and we were expected to stand round in small groups and stare at their mammaries. I was a little uncomfortable. The last time I’d paid that much attention to boobies, outside of a loving relationship, was when I first stumbled upon a topless beach in Spain. I say stumbled, because I tripped over an elderly German tourist on a sun lounger while staring at somebody else.
The little boys were 4 and 8 months and the younger one fitted the breastfeeding stereotype that was in my head. It was brought to the feeding station and held there while he filled himself up. The older one was more mobile and he treated his Mother as more of a self service option. Every hour or so, he would crawl over to where she was sitting. He would then climb up and start unbuttoning her blouse. Pretty soon he’d be getting a mouth full while his Mother read a book. We were there to learn how to breastfeed but the thought struck me that she would actually have a harder job teaching her kid when to stop. If it’s that easy, why would you ever bother with the pureed vegetables that other kids are forced to eat?
Two weeks later, we went to our first ante natal class. I’ve been talking to a lot of Dads recently and one thing that always comes up is the horror movies that are shown at these classes. Thankfully, ours was more old school and the presenter decided to showcase her acting skills by playing out most of the action that would normally be seen on screen. This involved lots of moaning and face pulling that would not be out of place at a Pentecostal speaking in tongues festival.
The gathering here was much more conventional with equal numbers of Dads to Mums. Naturally, it focused on the females but we men did get the occasional mention. It’s our job to drive to the hospital (and home again two days later) and to be the chief forehead wiper and back masseuse. We are also expected to be strong and supportive, particularly during that point in labour when it is pointed out that all this pain is actually our fault.
In two weeks time, we get a tour of the hospital. Apparently these days, the delivery rooms are en suite with TVs and vending machines. We’re expecting an 18 hour process, so I might bring along a Box Set of the Sopranos. It’s all very different to when I was a nipper. Mammy won’t be lying down for the delivery it seems. These days you are encouraged to lie across a large exercise ball or to be on all fours. It all seems terribly undignified to me, but then there is very little dignity involved at the start of the baby making process either.
The first class was fun and it gave us a chance to meet other people in our area who are also close to becoming parents. We feel we are part of a club now that lets you into the secret of life. In a few weeks we will become responsible for a little person. To mould them and to teach them and to give them the confidence to set forth into this mad world.
But the thing I’m learning now is that this small child has so much to teach me. He or she will make me a Father and that’s the greatest gift I will ever receive.
Monday, 26 September 2011
That game played by men with odd shaped balls
I sat in the back of a cab in Singapore discussing English football with the Taxi driver. He was up to date on the latest transfer speculation and even knew which player was doing immoral acts with grannies or farm yard animals. He asked me who I supported and I told him “Arsenal” which at the time was not the subject of ridicule that it is now.
He nodded sagely and left a gap in the conversation for me to return the question. “And who do you support?” I asked. “Goalkeepers” was his response. “I watch games and I want to see the keepers do well. Best game for me is one that finishes 0-0”. I thought he might have been extracting the urine, but Singaporean taxi drivers are not known for their humour.
I thought about his comments afterwards and while his support is unusual, it’s no dafter than attaching your fanaticism to a bunch of sulky millionaires who play for the same team in a league at the other side of the world.
Being a sports fan is crazy when you think about it. You will inhale the occasional whiff of high octane when your team does well but given the odds, you are far more likely to experience heartbreak. Leagues tend to be made up of 16 or more teams. Only one can win and the rest must wallow in the sport’s fans biggest fanciful dream, which is that next year will be better.
Last weekend, Ireland beat Australia for the first time at a World Cup. One headline I read said “One night in paradise makes up for 24 years of pain”. But is that true? Perhaps it is appropriate to a sailor on shore leave after a long stint at sea, but it doesn’t really apply to the rest of us. I could have switched teams for example and barracked for the All Blacks if I wanted success (or maybe not, given their World Cup record). I could have given up following Rugby completely, which in Melbourne at least would make me the same as everyone else.
The other complication is that for every team I like, I tend to passionately despise another. You might think that evens out my chances of being happy. But actually it tends to double the pain. I’m naturally drawn to underdogs and as a result I tend to dislike cocky favourites. The problem is that the cocky ones are usually favourites for a reason, as are the underdogs.
In AFL for example, I follow Carlton, a team that hasn’t won anything in sixteen years and were bottom of the league when I arrived in Australia. I am just as happy to see them win as I am to see Collingwood lose. They are the self appointed giants of AFL and strut around like peacocks in heat. I’ve put up with four years of disappointment, watching Carlton stumble at a crucial stage of the season and at the same time seeing Collingwood rise to the top.
This year I made the mistake of getting my hopes up. We finally found some form and made a late run for the title. That dream ended last Saturday night when they went down by 3 points in Perth. What was worse for me (apart from the fact that Collingwood still look odds on to win again this year) is that the Carlton game was on TV immediately after Ireland’s historic win against Australia in the Rugby world cup. Nothing highlighted the swings and arrows of outrageous fortune more than those few hours. I went from being ecstatic to been downright grumpy, with the beer I’d drunk being a catalyst to swing my mood.
At least now that Carlton are out of the running in the AFL and Arsenal never even got into a running stride, I can devote my attention to the Rugby. I have a chequered past in that respect. Despite my size and obsession with sports, I never actually played the game. In my hometown, Rugby was the preserve of the Doctor and Solicitor community with the occasional social climber from my working class end of the street. I followed games on TV and became fascinated with the complicated rules of the sport. But to the outside world, I maintained a well nourished chip on my shoulder about the middle class roots of the game.
Then of course I met a nice middle class girl whose Father happened to be President of the Munster Rugby Union. And so it came to pass that the first ever live game of Rugby I attended was the World Cup Final in 1991. We obtained 11 tickets from her Father and distributed them among the few people we knew in London at the time who had a passing interest in the game. That only amounted to 7 and so we watched the sell out final from the West Stand at Twickenham with 4 empty seats beside us.
After that nice middle class girl turned out to be not so nice after all, I rebelled a little against Rugby and mocked the pretensions of its yuppy supporters. But like Michael in the Godfather, I tried to get out but they pulled me back in again. I started going on away trips to Rome and following club matches and before I knew where I was, I was back in the warm embrace of those with money and manners.
Alas, I won’t make it to any games at this World Cup. Upcoming fatherhood brings other priorities. But I am at least in the right time zone to enjoy the matches and I find that I don’t dislike any of the teams with the sort of venom I reserve for the likes of Manchester United and Collingwood. So if Ireland doesn’t win, I won’t be too distressed about the team that does.
If Ireland does win of course, that will be a different matter. My cries of joy will be heard as far away as the taxi ranks of Singapore.
He nodded sagely and left a gap in the conversation for me to return the question. “And who do you support?” I asked. “Goalkeepers” was his response. “I watch games and I want to see the keepers do well. Best game for me is one that finishes 0-0”. I thought he might have been extracting the urine, but Singaporean taxi drivers are not known for their humour.
I thought about his comments afterwards and while his support is unusual, it’s no dafter than attaching your fanaticism to a bunch of sulky millionaires who play for the same team in a league at the other side of the world.
Being a sports fan is crazy when you think about it. You will inhale the occasional whiff of high octane when your team does well but given the odds, you are far more likely to experience heartbreak. Leagues tend to be made up of 16 or more teams. Only one can win and the rest must wallow in the sport’s fans biggest fanciful dream, which is that next year will be better.
Last weekend, Ireland beat Australia for the first time at a World Cup. One headline I read said “One night in paradise makes up for 24 years of pain”. But is that true? Perhaps it is appropriate to a sailor on shore leave after a long stint at sea, but it doesn’t really apply to the rest of us. I could have switched teams for example and barracked for the All Blacks if I wanted success (or maybe not, given their World Cup record). I could have given up following Rugby completely, which in Melbourne at least would make me the same as everyone else.
The other complication is that for every team I like, I tend to passionately despise another. You might think that evens out my chances of being happy. But actually it tends to double the pain. I’m naturally drawn to underdogs and as a result I tend to dislike cocky favourites. The problem is that the cocky ones are usually favourites for a reason, as are the underdogs.
In AFL for example, I follow Carlton, a team that hasn’t won anything in sixteen years and were bottom of the league when I arrived in Australia. I am just as happy to see them win as I am to see Collingwood lose. They are the self appointed giants of AFL and strut around like peacocks in heat. I’ve put up with four years of disappointment, watching Carlton stumble at a crucial stage of the season and at the same time seeing Collingwood rise to the top.
This year I made the mistake of getting my hopes up. We finally found some form and made a late run for the title. That dream ended last Saturday night when they went down by 3 points in Perth. What was worse for me (apart from the fact that Collingwood still look odds on to win again this year) is that the Carlton game was on TV immediately after Ireland’s historic win against Australia in the Rugby world cup. Nothing highlighted the swings and arrows of outrageous fortune more than those few hours. I went from being ecstatic to been downright grumpy, with the beer I’d drunk being a catalyst to swing my mood.
At least now that Carlton are out of the running in the AFL and Arsenal never even got into a running stride, I can devote my attention to the Rugby. I have a chequered past in that respect. Despite my size and obsession with sports, I never actually played the game. In my hometown, Rugby was the preserve of the Doctor and Solicitor community with the occasional social climber from my working class end of the street. I followed games on TV and became fascinated with the complicated rules of the sport. But to the outside world, I maintained a well nourished chip on my shoulder about the middle class roots of the game.
Then of course I met a nice middle class girl whose Father happened to be President of the Munster Rugby Union. And so it came to pass that the first ever live game of Rugby I attended was the World Cup Final in 1991. We obtained 11 tickets from her Father and distributed them among the few people we knew in London at the time who had a passing interest in the game. That only amounted to 7 and so we watched the sell out final from the West Stand at Twickenham with 4 empty seats beside us.
After that nice middle class girl turned out to be not so nice after all, I rebelled a little against Rugby and mocked the pretensions of its yuppy supporters. But like Michael in the Godfather, I tried to get out but they pulled me back in again. I started going on away trips to Rome and following club matches and before I knew where I was, I was back in the warm embrace of those with money and manners.
Alas, I won’t make it to any games at this World Cup. Upcoming fatherhood brings other priorities. But I am at least in the right time zone to enjoy the matches and I find that I don’t dislike any of the teams with the sort of venom I reserve for the likes of Manchester United and Collingwood. So if Ireland doesn’t win, I won’t be too distressed about the team that does.
If Ireland does win of course, that will be a different matter. My cries of joy will be heard as far away as the taxi ranks of Singapore.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Rugby as non International Sport
Don is an American and very proud of his country. Although not so proud that he would actually live there (the irony of me being proud of my country is not lost on me). I want to watch Ireland’s games at the World Cup in the company of somebody from the country against which we are playing. Rugby is a deeply illogical game and having somebody to banter with is the only way of making it even mildly entertaining.
We played the yanks on September 11th, a day that is important to them for obvious reasons. Don got emotional during the minute silence before the game. I thought it might be a good time to bring up some of the conspiracy theories that surround that day. I don’t mean the ones about the towers been brought down by preset explosives or the van load of Israelis who were seen cheering as the towers collapse. I mean the one about how America used the events of that day to press their crazy date system on the rest of the world. Days are followed by months which are followed by years and that’s the logical way to express a date. So why does the world talk about 9/11? Let the Americans call it that if they want. But to the rest of us it should be 11/9.
I think this is a slippery slope and soon we will not just be using their date format, but we’ll scrap metric and return to pints and gallons. I think there is also room to speculate that the London bombings in 2005 were orchestrated to happen on the 7th July so that the English could talk about 7/7. This allows them to simultaneously keep their American paymasters happy by using the Yankee date format while pretending to the rest of the world that their using their format too.
After Don had dismissed my theories with a disdainful look, we turned our attention back to the pre match entertainment. The Auckland choral choir stepped up to sing the Irish anthem. Except of course it wasn’t the Irish anthem. It’s a made up song designed to not upset anyone but in the process pleasing no one. “Ireland’s Call” is a dirge that would not be out of place in a Michael Flatley musical.
To make matters worse, the Auckland choir decided to only allow its female singers to participate, which made the aforementioned call sound like a screech from a pack of banshees who had just had boiling water poured on them. The male members of the choir followed with a powerful rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” which was almost enough to encourage me to buy a helicopter and head off to some Middle Eastern country on a bombing mission. The contrast between the two anthems could not be starker.
Don, like many Americans, has some Irish blood racing through his veins. It’s mixed with some German, Cherokee Indian and lots of cocaine, if his bulging eyeballs were any guide. When the fine ladies of Auckland had finished butchering Ireland’s Call, Don looked at me with a quizzed expression. “That’s not the song they used to play at the end of the night in Dropkick Murphys in Boston”, he said. I sighed, because I knew that I was about to set off on an explanation of Ireland’s twisted nationhood for the thousand time since I arrived on this fatal shore.
I should say upfront that I voted for the Good Friday agreement which was the definitive Irish solution to an Irish problem. That agreement allows people in Northern Ireland to choose between British and Irish citizenship. I might be wrong, but I think this is the only place in the world that allows this duality. You can be in Ireland all your life but choose not to be Irish. As a country of course “Ireland” doesn’t actually exist. Geographically, it is an island off the North West coast of Europe. But politically, in terms of the United Nations and all that, it’s made up of the Republic of Ireland and a dysfunctional province which is part of the United Kingdom.
Many Australians think Ireland is part of the UK as the media likes to use those two letters as shorthand for anything in that far off neck of the word. This pricks my national pride as it is only Northern Island that is part of the United Kingdom, but we southerners don’t help the confusion by using the shorthand of “Ireland” to represent our part of the country.
Don’s eyes were drooping as I continued with an explanation of dominion status in the 1930s. None of it matters of course, except when it comes to sport. Ireland has two soccer teams which reflect the political structure of the Island. It sends one team to the Olympics which is drawn from the whole island but only includes those who have chosen to be Irish. The only sports in which we present an All Ireland team are Rugby, Hockey and Cricket. Which are of course, the old middle class garrison games of British occupation.
None of these teams fly the Irish flag or play the Irish anthem before games. To complain about this sets you out as a petty minded nationalist. Yet these teams participate in International sport. Which of course contains the word “nation” at its heart. Sport between countries is all about nationhood. The feeling of representation that it brings and the pride in being from a particular place. We Irish are the only participants at the world cup that come from a compromise of two countries. And that compromise dilutes us all I think.
But they wear the green and at the end of the day that’s enough for me. I think we have a good chance of winning, even though Don thinks it has already been fixed that New Zealand will lift the trophy. He likes a good conspiracy theory it must be said.
We played the yanks on September 11th, a day that is important to them for obvious reasons. Don got emotional during the minute silence before the game. I thought it might be a good time to bring up some of the conspiracy theories that surround that day. I don’t mean the ones about the towers been brought down by preset explosives or the van load of Israelis who were seen cheering as the towers collapse. I mean the one about how America used the events of that day to press their crazy date system on the rest of the world. Days are followed by months which are followed by years and that’s the logical way to express a date. So why does the world talk about 9/11? Let the Americans call it that if they want. But to the rest of us it should be 11/9.
I think this is a slippery slope and soon we will not just be using their date format, but we’ll scrap metric and return to pints and gallons. I think there is also room to speculate that the London bombings in 2005 were orchestrated to happen on the 7th July so that the English could talk about 7/7. This allows them to simultaneously keep their American paymasters happy by using the Yankee date format while pretending to the rest of the world that their using their format too.
After Don had dismissed my theories with a disdainful look, we turned our attention back to the pre match entertainment. The Auckland choral choir stepped up to sing the Irish anthem. Except of course it wasn’t the Irish anthem. It’s a made up song designed to not upset anyone but in the process pleasing no one. “Ireland’s Call” is a dirge that would not be out of place in a Michael Flatley musical.
To make matters worse, the Auckland choir decided to only allow its female singers to participate, which made the aforementioned call sound like a screech from a pack of banshees who had just had boiling water poured on them. The male members of the choir followed with a powerful rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” which was almost enough to encourage me to buy a helicopter and head off to some Middle Eastern country on a bombing mission. The contrast between the two anthems could not be starker.
Don, like many Americans, has some Irish blood racing through his veins. It’s mixed with some German, Cherokee Indian and lots of cocaine, if his bulging eyeballs were any guide. When the fine ladies of Auckland had finished butchering Ireland’s Call, Don looked at me with a quizzed expression. “That’s not the song they used to play at the end of the night in Dropkick Murphys in Boston”, he said. I sighed, because I knew that I was about to set off on an explanation of Ireland’s twisted nationhood for the thousand time since I arrived on this fatal shore.
I should say upfront that I voted for the Good Friday agreement which was the definitive Irish solution to an Irish problem. That agreement allows people in Northern Ireland to choose between British and Irish citizenship. I might be wrong, but I think this is the only place in the world that allows this duality. You can be in Ireland all your life but choose not to be Irish. As a country of course “Ireland” doesn’t actually exist. Geographically, it is an island off the North West coast of Europe. But politically, in terms of the United Nations and all that, it’s made up of the Republic of Ireland and a dysfunctional province which is part of the United Kingdom.
Many Australians think Ireland is part of the UK as the media likes to use those two letters as shorthand for anything in that far off neck of the word. This pricks my national pride as it is only Northern Island that is part of the United Kingdom, but we southerners don’t help the confusion by using the shorthand of “Ireland” to represent our part of the country.
Don’s eyes were drooping as I continued with an explanation of dominion status in the 1930s. None of it matters of course, except when it comes to sport. Ireland has two soccer teams which reflect the political structure of the Island. It sends one team to the Olympics which is drawn from the whole island but only includes those who have chosen to be Irish. The only sports in which we present an All Ireland team are Rugby, Hockey and Cricket. Which are of course, the old middle class garrison games of British occupation.
None of these teams fly the Irish flag or play the Irish anthem before games. To complain about this sets you out as a petty minded nationalist. Yet these teams participate in International sport. Which of course contains the word “nation” at its heart. Sport between countries is all about nationhood. The feeling of representation that it brings and the pride in being from a particular place. We Irish are the only participants at the world cup that come from a compromise of two countries. And that compromise dilutes us all I think.
But they wear the green and at the end of the day that’s enough for me. I think we have a good chance of winning, even though Don thinks it has already been fixed that New Zealand will lift the trophy. He likes a good conspiracy theory it must be said.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
We Can Be Heroes
They say that you should never meet your heroes because you’ll find that they are human like everyone else. I don’t hold to this belief. I want to see my heroes as real people. It makes me realise that anything is possible. You don’t have to be superman to become a writer or a football star.
I had the pleasure of meeting two of my heroes recently. Martin Flanagan writes about sport and culture in the Melbourne Age. I noticed him shortly after arriving in this fine city when an article about the aboriginal contribution to Australian Rules Football appeared in the paper. He seeks out the spirituality of sport and delves into its emotions. His book “Southern sky, Western Oval” was almost enough to make me give up my new found love of Carlton and pledge my allegiance to the Bulldogs.
He is the first person I look for in the Saturday newspaper and I was delighted when I found out last month that he was booked to speak in our local, at an event called “Spirituality in the Pub”. This is aimed at what might be charitably described as cafeteria Catholics. There were about 300 hundred people there, but it felt like he was making the speech directly to me. Like many Australians he has an Irish surname and through his writing I know that he is proud of his heritage and has visited the old country on many occasions.
His story that night began in 1977 when as a troubled Tasmanian teenager; he made his first journey to Roscommon where the Flanagans originate from. He found himself at a Mass rock in the wild countryside and felt a homecoming. It wasn’t to the land of his forefathers however. Instead, he finally felt a connection to the aboriginal people of his homeland and he had to travel to the other side of the world to discover it.
He went on to explain that Irish and Australian indigenous spirituality is basically the same. I could tell that this was shocking most of the audience, who being Catholic, were largely comprised of third and fourth generation Paddies who had risen to the middle class ranks of Melbourne society. While many would have a strong social conscience, there is an undercurrent of racism in Australian society and they would not like to think that the Irish culture to which they cling to so proudly could be connected to the black fellas of Australia that they spend so much of their lives avoiding.
But I was fascinated. I suddenly saw that the things we did as children were similar if not the same as that done by aboriginals. They walk many miles to a particular tree in the desert to sing a song and eat a meal that reminds them of their ancestors. They treasure rocks such as Uluru and hold them sacred and they have a connection and affinity to the land and sky.
In Ireland, we climb Croagh Patrick in our bare feet. We leave fairy mounds untouched while ploughing large fields. When we were kids we would regularly climb into the car on a Sunday and travel to a place called Faughart. The back door would open and the five of us would pour out and make our way to a stone in the centre of an ancient graveyard that had a strange indentation.
We would touch this indentation and then climb back into the car. At other times of year we would visit a holy well and wait for a spring to miraculously appear. Luckily the rainfall in Ireland means that you can justify a puddle as a spring and we were always satisfied that a miracle had occurred.
It suddenly all made sense. We are an indigenous people and we share a spiritual connection to our brothers across the world. When I shook his hand at the end of the lecture, I realised that he was a humble man who was happy to chat about his possible cousin, Ming Flanagan, part time pot smoker and full time politician.
I still search for his stories first each Saturday and, if anything, meeting him in person has increased my fascination with the man.
Last week I met another hero. On my second day in Melbourne I went to an AFL game. Carlton was playing Melbourne at the MCG in front of a bored crowd. It later transpired that the Blues were bottom of the league and Melbourne weren’t much higher. I had pinned my colours to the Blues mast before landing on these shores because they contained among their playing list a guy who had thrilled me on the hurling pitches of Ireland. His name is Setanta O’hailpin and he plays AFL like nobody else. Which is why he regularly gets dropped from the team.
I met him at a local footy oval where Ireland was playing New Zealand in the semi finals of the International Cup, a sort of World Cup for Aussie Rules without the inclusion of Aussies. I built up the courage to approach him and planned to say something erudite and witty. In the end I gushed in a high pitched voice “you’re my hero”.
He had the good grace to ignore my teenage fan club impersonation and we ended up speaking for ten minutes on diverse issues such as whether Jim Corr is gay and the obvious mutual dislike that exists between Setanta and the Carlton coach.
I came away feeling that my hero worship had been justified and I’ll be screaming support for him on Saturday night when he plays against St Kilda.
Ireland went on to win that International Cup in a come from behind victory against Papua New Guinea. It was a day when a group of ordinary Irishmen became heroes on the majestic open spaces of the MCG. It showed me in the most spectacular way that we can all be heroes and if not, we can at least talk to a hero every now and again.
I had the pleasure of meeting two of my heroes recently. Martin Flanagan writes about sport and culture in the Melbourne Age. I noticed him shortly after arriving in this fine city when an article about the aboriginal contribution to Australian Rules Football appeared in the paper. He seeks out the spirituality of sport and delves into its emotions. His book “Southern sky, Western Oval” was almost enough to make me give up my new found love of Carlton and pledge my allegiance to the Bulldogs.
He is the first person I look for in the Saturday newspaper and I was delighted when I found out last month that he was booked to speak in our local, at an event called “Spirituality in the Pub”. This is aimed at what might be charitably described as cafeteria Catholics. There were about 300 hundred people there, but it felt like he was making the speech directly to me. Like many Australians he has an Irish surname and through his writing I know that he is proud of his heritage and has visited the old country on many occasions.
His story that night began in 1977 when as a troubled Tasmanian teenager; he made his first journey to Roscommon where the Flanagans originate from. He found himself at a Mass rock in the wild countryside and felt a homecoming. It wasn’t to the land of his forefathers however. Instead, he finally felt a connection to the aboriginal people of his homeland and he had to travel to the other side of the world to discover it.
He went on to explain that Irish and Australian indigenous spirituality is basically the same. I could tell that this was shocking most of the audience, who being Catholic, were largely comprised of third and fourth generation Paddies who had risen to the middle class ranks of Melbourne society. While many would have a strong social conscience, there is an undercurrent of racism in Australian society and they would not like to think that the Irish culture to which they cling to so proudly could be connected to the black fellas of Australia that they spend so much of their lives avoiding.
But I was fascinated. I suddenly saw that the things we did as children were similar if not the same as that done by aboriginals. They walk many miles to a particular tree in the desert to sing a song and eat a meal that reminds them of their ancestors. They treasure rocks such as Uluru and hold them sacred and they have a connection and affinity to the land and sky.
In Ireland, we climb Croagh Patrick in our bare feet. We leave fairy mounds untouched while ploughing large fields. When we were kids we would regularly climb into the car on a Sunday and travel to a place called Faughart. The back door would open and the five of us would pour out and make our way to a stone in the centre of an ancient graveyard that had a strange indentation.
We would touch this indentation and then climb back into the car. At other times of year we would visit a holy well and wait for a spring to miraculously appear. Luckily the rainfall in Ireland means that you can justify a puddle as a spring and we were always satisfied that a miracle had occurred.
It suddenly all made sense. We are an indigenous people and we share a spiritual connection to our brothers across the world. When I shook his hand at the end of the lecture, I realised that he was a humble man who was happy to chat about his possible cousin, Ming Flanagan, part time pot smoker and full time politician.
I still search for his stories first each Saturday and, if anything, meeting him in person has increased my fascination with the man.
Last week I met another hero. On my second day in Melbourne I went to an AFL game. Carlton was playing Melbourne at the MCG in front of a bored crowd. It later transpired that the Blues were bottom of the league and Melbourne weren’t much higher. I had pinned my colours to the Blues mast before landing on these shores because they contained among their playing list a guy who had thrilled me on the hurling pitches of Ireland. His name is Setanta O’hailpin and he plays AFL like nobody else. Which is why he regularly gets dropped from the team.
I met him at a local footy oval where Ireland was playing New Zealand in the semi finals of the International Cup, a sort of World Cup for Aussie Rules without the inclusion of Aussies. I built up the courage to approach him and planned to say something erudite and witty. In the end I gushed in a high pitched voice “you’re my hero”.
He had the good grace to ignore my teenage fan club impersonation and we ended up speaking for ten minutes on diverse issues such as whether Jim Corr is gay and the obvious mutual dislike that exists between Setanta and the Carlton coach.
I came away feeling that my hero worship had been justified and I’ll be screaming support for him on Saturday night when he plays against St Kilda.
Ireland went on to win that International Cup in a come from behind victory against Papua New Guinea. It was a day when a group of ordinary Irishmen became heroes on the majestic open spaces of the MCG. It showed me in the most spectacular way that we can all be heroes and if not, we can at least talk to a hero every now and again.
Monday, 22 August 2011
Of Mice and Men
Red back spiders hide under toilet seats and bite the bum of unsuspecting visitors. Brown snakes live under houses, ready to pounce on children who foolishly climb under floors to retrieve lost balls. Possums invade attic spaces and drive house owners demented with their scratching and nocturnal lovemaking.
I heard all these stories before moving to Australia and I’m pleased to say that none of this has happened, at least not to me. But I did get my first shock from a wild animal last week and it turned out to be of European origin. It was I’m embarrassed to say, a humble mouse.
In my defence I should point out that I was under a bit of stress at the time. I had just spent the afternoon making a curry paste with various exotic spices. Rather stupidly, in hindsight at least, I managed to get a lot of it on my hands and nature being what it is, it came back to bite me. About two hours after I’d massaged most of the paste into my hands, they started burning like irons that had been left in the fire overnight. I had to resort to immersing them in a bowl of water, which was soothing but not really practical for sleeping or any activity that involved moving around.
When I was a teenager, we would play a trick on friends who had fallen asleep on sofas after a night’s drinking. We would place one of their hands in a bowl of water and through a process of osmosis; this would cause the unfortunate sleeper to wet himself. Oh, how we laughed. I wasn’t about to inflict this trick on myself and in any event, it really only works with one hand. I haven’t mastered the gymnastic requirements of keeping both hands in a bowl of water while sleeping. At least not in such a way that would stop the bowl from spilling during one of my nocturnal twists and turns.
So it was that I found myself in a slightly agitated state in the bathroom around 11pm, when our rodent friend darted across the tiled floor. I’d like to say I shrieked like a little girl, but it was worse than that. My attempted scream was trapped in my throat as though somebody had pressed the pause button on my body. I finally summoned the strength to flee from the bathroom and took sanctuary in the arms of my heavily pregnant wife. Despite her “in utero” condition I implored her to sort the problem out.
She humoured me by heading off to investigate, suspecting, it seems, that I might be hallucinating. Shortly afterwards, I heard a laugh which suggested that the ugly little creature had appeared to her too. There followed a restless night where I dreamed of dipping my hands into molten steel while mice nibbled at my earlobes. I’ve had better night’s sleep on airplanes and that’s saying something.
The following day we laid more traps and poison than you’d find at a bakery that was next door to the town dump. We toyed with the idea of setting humanitarian traps for a second until I remembered that mice aren’t human and if they called the traps ‘miceitarian’ I might be more sympathetic. I appreciate that this might be offensive to some people; particularly those who contribute to donkey charities while three million people starve in East Africa. But I’m not a fan of animals, apart from when it comes to eating them. I considered becoming vegetarian once (like most bad decisions I’ve taken in life, it was done to impress a girl) until I realised that if God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.
It took the mouse two days to be tempted by our alluring concoction of peanuts and butter, but early on Tuesday morning we heard a loud snap from the spare bedroom and on investigation we found a mouse who, if he hadn’t been dead, would have benefitted from a good shoulder and neck massage.
They say that when you’ve seen a mouse, you’ve really only seen the one who is scavenging for a family of ten. My dad used to say that he was scared to kill a mouse because two hundred would turn up for the funeral. Both of these statements suggest that mice are communal and our friend is unlikely to have been alone. So we’ve kept the traps and poison set in the event that his family come out of hiding.
This is the first rodent I’ve seen in years, but time is not the explanation for my meekness. The truth is, I’ve had a phobia about rodents since out pet dog killed a family of rats and left them in a neat pile at our backdoor. I thought I’d grown out of this fear in my teenage years until I got a job working in a pub and had the unenviable task of putting the bins out each Sunday night. There were no wheelie bins in those days, just open cardboard boxes with empty bottles, food scraps and cigarette ash (recycling in those days described an occasion when you used your bike twice in one day).
As I balanced a particularly heavy box on my knee, a large mouse popped out the top and after a momentary appraisal of the situation, he figured that the shortest route to ground was to hop onto my knee and scurry down my leg. In my darkest, rodent filled nightmares I can still feel the patter of those tiny feet running down my leg.
So I live in a country of snakes, spiders and crocodiles and I’m surrounded by seas filled with sharks and killer stingrays. Yet none of these particularly bother me. But put me in a room with a tiny mouse and I turn into a quivering wreck. We choose our own devils. The devil doesn’t choose us.
I heard all these stories before moving to Australia and I’m pleased to say that none of this has happened, at least not to me. But I did get my first shock from a wild animal last week and it turned out to be of European origin. It was I’m embarrassed to say, a humble mouse.
In my defence I should point out that I was under a bit of stress at the time. I had just spent the afternoon making a curry paste with various exotic spices. Rather stupidly, in hindsight at least, I managed to get a lot of it on my hands and nature being what it is, it came back to bite me. About two hours after I’d massaged most of the paste into my hands, they started burning like irons that had been left in the fire overnight. I had to resort to immersing them in a bowl of water, which was soothing but not really practical for sleeping or any activity that involved moving around.
When I was a teenager, we would play a trick on friends who had fallen asleep on sofas after a night’s drinking. We would place one of their hands in a bowl of water and through a process of osmosis; this would cause the unfortunate sleeper to wet himself. Oh, how we laughed. I wasn’t about to inflict this trick on myself and in any event, it really only works with one hand. I haven’t mastered the gymnastic requirements of keeping both hands in a bowl of water while sleeping. At least not in such a way that would stop the bowl from spilling during one of my nocturnal twists and turns.
So it was that I found myself in a slightly agitated state in the bathroom around 11pm, when our rodent friend darted across the tiled floor. I’d like to say I shrieked like a little girl, but it was worse than that. My attempted scream was trapped in my throat as though somebody had pressed the pause button on my body. I finally summoned the strength to flee from the bathroom and took sanctuary in the arms of my heavily pregnant wife. Despite her “in utero” condition I implored her to sort the problem out.
She humoured me by heading off to investigate, suspecting, it seems, that I might be hallucinating. Shortly afterwards, I heard a laugh which suggested that the ugly little creature had appeared to her too. There followed a restless night where I dreamed of dipping my hands into molten steel while mice nibbled at my earlobes. I’ve had better night’s sleep on airplanes and that’s saying something.
The following day we laid more traps and poison than you’d find at a bakery that was next door to the town dump. We toyed with the idea of setting humanitarian traps for a second until I remembered that mice aren’t human and if they called the traps ‘miceitarian’ I might be more sympathetic. I appreciate that this might be offensive to some people; particularly those who contribute to donkey charities while three million people starve in East Africa. But I’m not a fan of animals, apart from when it comes to eating them. I considered becoming vegetarian once (like most bad decisions I’ve taken in life, it was done to impress a girl) until I realised that if God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.
It took the mouse two days to be tempted by our alluring concoction of peanuts and butter, but early on Tuesday morning we heard a loud snap from the spare bedroom and on investigation we found a mouse who, if he hadn’t been dead, would have benefitted from a good shoulder and neck massage.
They say that when you’ve seen a mouse, you’ve really only seen the one who is scavenging for a family of ten. My dad used to say that he was scared to kill a mouse because two hundred would turn up for the funeral. Both of these statements suggest that mice are communal and our friend is unlikely to have been alone. So we’ve kept the traps and poison set in the event that his family come out of hiding.
This is the first rodent I’ve seen in years, but time is not the explanation for my meekness. The truth is, I’ve had a phobia about rodents since out pet dog killed a family of rats and left them in a neat pile at our backdoor. I thought I’d grown out of this fear in my teenage years until I got a job working in a pub and had the unenviable task of putting the bins out each Sunday night. There were no wheelie bins in those days, just open cardboard boxes with empty bottles, food scraps and cigarette ash (recycling in those days described an occasion when you used your bike twice in one day).
As I balanced a particularly heavy box on my knee, a large mouse popped out the top and after a momentary appraisal of the situation, he figured that the shortest route to ground was to hop onto my knee and scurry down my leg. In my darkest, rodent filled nightmares I can still feel the patter of those tiny feet running down my leg.
So I live in a country of snakes, spiders and crocodiles and I’m surrounded by seas filled with sharks and killer stingrays. Yet none of these particularly bother me. But put me in a room with a tiny mouse and I turn into a quivering wreck. We choose our own devils. The devil doesn’t choose us.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
A Guide to the Australian Vernacular
Last week I found myself saying “Fair Dinkum” in response to an outrageous statement I’d just listened to. The person who had uttered that statement didn’t bat an eyelid. “Fair Dinkum” is mentioned as often here as “what’s the craic?” is back in Ireland. I remember a Polish shop attendant once saying that to me and as I was struck by how funny it sounded. Australians are much more forgiving when I mangle their vernacular.
For those wondering what Fair Dinkum means, it really depends on the inflection you put at the end of the last syllable. This is sometimes difficult to discern, as Aussies tend to raise their voice at the end of every sentence, so that everything sounds like a question. This is a particular problem when asking for directions from a teenager. I was only here a week when I needed to find the train station and made the mistake of questioning a surly youngster. I got a reply, which sounded like “You go to the end of this road and turn left?” To which I rudely answered, “Well if I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you, would I”?
The most common usage of Fair Dinkum is to register surprise or to ask whether the speaker is serious. It has a childish quality however, which makes me think that John McEnroe would not have had the same dramatic influence on the tennis world if he had been Australian. Shouting, “You cannot be fair dinkum” at an umpire just doesn’t sound so scary.
Strewth is another word I find myself using with worrying regularity. A mild exclamation, it can be included in most sentences without insulting God or any of his family. It can be used for example to express disgust at a bad pint of beer and is more economical than its Irish cousin, “Jesus, Mary and St Joseph”.
Sport has its own language in many countries. I can’t quite bring myself to call a football field “a paddock” but I do now ask people who they barrack for rather than asking who they support. Carlton are my team and one of the ongoing debates in our stuttering season has been whether we should play Lachie Henderson upfront instead of my Irish hero, Setanta O’Hailpin. Last week I found myself sending a text to a fellow Carlton fan that read “You’ve been spruiking that drongo Henderson all year. He couldn’t hit a roo’s clacker from two feet away”. I had to wash my mouth out with salt afterwards.
Australian rules football is a basic catch and kick game that has been sullied in recent years by the introduction of hand passing. Like many fans I hanker for the old days, except in my case I didn’t actually experience them. I can be found screaming at a player in possession “Put it on the slipper” which is an exultation for him to kick the bloody thing.
But it is not only in pubs and sports grounds that Australian English differs from the rest of the Anglophone world. The business pages regularly tell of business people or politicians who have ‘rorted’ the system. It refers to the act of defrauding and can be used as a noun or verb. I rort, you rort, he rorts etc.
Many of these Australian specific words come from old English slant terms. Rort for example derives from ‘rorty’, a term that means having fun or being boisterous, which gives an indication of early Australian attitudes to crime.
The Americans of course have also taken old English and given it a new life. They talk of sheriffs and penitentiaries but we’ve seen enough Hollywood films to make these terms acceptable all over the world. Indeed, it seems that American English is now the default version of the old Anglo tongue. The recent riots in London, for example, started with a text that said, “The Feds are chasing me”.
Australian English, on the other hand, is much less prevalent in the wider world. The makers of “Neighbours” and “Home and Away” have an eye on International sales and are careful not to include too many local phrases.
We Irish of course were forced by our oppressors to speak their tongue, but being the good natured people we are, we handed English back in a better condition than we had received it.
Our original language was vivid and full of expression (we have 31 words for seaweed for example), which might explain why Irish people spend words like sailors while the English hoard them like misers.
I tried to explain to an Australian recently that the richness of the Irish language was a result of its complex grammar and tense structure. This includes the “modh coinnÃollach” which is the bane of Irish school days. This is basically a conditional or as my Australian friend put it, a wishful thinking tense. It also explains why Irish people say, “Would have, could have, should have” so much.
In July, I celebrated four years in this land of kangaroos and funny words. A lot has happened in that time. The world has lurched from financial crisis to financial crisis. I fell off my bike and cracked my head and danced with cancer and came out the other side. And most importantly, I got married and have a kid on the way.
But one thing hasn’t changed in those four years. I still have my Irish accent. I still struggle to pronounce words beginning with ‘th’ and I put the emphasis at the beginning of words and not at the end as many Australians do.
I don’t have red hair or twinkling green eyes like many of my countrymen. I don’t even have an Irish sounding name. So my accent is my only means of preserving my identity. I hope it stays that way and that’s fair dinkum. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to throw a few prawns on the Barbie and to tuck into a few stubbies that I have chilling in my eski.
For those wondering what Fair Dinkum means, it really depends on the inflection you put at the end of the last syllable. This is sometimes difficult to discern, as Aussies tend to raise their voice at the end of every sentence, so that everything sounds like a question. This is a particular problem when asking for directions from a teenager. I was only here a week when I needed to find the train station and made the mistake of questioning a surly youngster. I got a reply, which sounded like “You go to the end of this road and turn left?” To which I rudely answered, “Well if I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you, would I”?
The most common usage of Fair Dinkum is to register surprise or to ask whether the speaker is serious. It has a childish quality however, which makes me think that John McEnroe would not have had the same dramatic influence on the tennis world if he had been Australian. Shouting, “You cannot be fair dinkum” at an umpire just doesn’t sound so scary.
Strewth is another word I find myself using with worrying regularity. A mild exclamation, it can be included in most sentences without insulting God or any of his family. It can be used for example to express disgust at a bad pint of beer and is more economical than its Irish cousin, “Jesus, Mary and St Joseph”.
Sport has its own language in many countries. I can’t quite bring myself to call a football field “a paddock” but I do now ask people who they barrack for rather than asking who they support. Carlton are my team and one of the ongoing debates in our stuttering season has been whether we should play Lachie Henderson upfront instead of my Irish hero, Setanta O’Hailpin. Last week I found myself sending a text to a fellow Carlton fan that read “You’ve been spruiking that drongo Henderson all year. He couldn’t hit a roo’s clacker from two feet away”. I had to wash my mouth out with salt afterwards.
Australian rules football is a basic catch and kick game that has been sullied in recent years by the introduction of hand passing. Like many fans I hanker for the old days, except in my case I didn’t actually experience them. I can be found screaming at a player in possession “Put it on the slipper” which is an exultation for him to kick the bloody thing.
But it is not only in pubs and sports grounds that Australian English differs from the rest of the Anglophone world. The business pages regularly tell of business people or politicians who have ‘rorted’ the system. It refers to the act of defrauding and can be used as a noun or verb. I rort, you rort, he rorts etc.
Many of these Australian specific words come from old English slant terms. Rort for example derives from ‘rorty’, a term that means having fun or being boisterous, which gives an indication of early Australian attitudes to crime.
The Americans of course have also taken old English and given it a new life. They talk of sheriffs and penitentiaries but we’ve seen enough Hollywood films to make these terms acceptable all over the world. Indeed, it seems that American English is now the default version of the old Anglo tongue. The recent riots in London, for example, started with a text that said, “The Feds are chasing me”.
Australian English, on the other hand, is much less prevalent in the wider world. The makers of “Neighbours” and “Home and Away” have an eye on International sales and are careful not to include too many local phrases.
We Irish of course were forced by our oppressors to speak their tongue, but being the good natured people we are, we handed English back in a better condition than we had received it.
Our original language was vivid and full of expression (we have 31 words for seaweed for example), which might explain why Irish people spend words like sailors while the English hoard them like misers.
I tried to explain to an Australian recently that the richness of the Irish language was a result of its complex grammar and tense structure. This includes the “modh coinnÃollach” which is the bane of Irish school days. This is basically a conditional or as my Australian friend put it, a wishful thinking tense. It also explains why Irish people say, “Would have, could have, should have” so much.
In July, I celebrated four years in this land of kangaroos and funny words. A lot has happened in that time. The world has lurched from financial crisis to financial crisis. I fell off my bike and cracked my head and danced with cancer and came out the other side. And most importantly, I got married and have a kid on the way.
But one thing hasn’t changed in those four years. I still have my Irish accent. I still struggle to pronounce words beginning with ‘th’ and I put the emphasis at the beginning of words and not at the end as many Australians do.
I don’t have red hair or twinkling green eyes like many of my countrymen. I don’t even have an Irish sounding name. So my accent is my only means of preserving my identity. I hope it stays that way and that’s fair dinkum. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to throw a few prawns on the Barbie and to tuck into a few stubbies that I have chilling in my eski.
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