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| Guinness on my Compass: October 2000 - "Sydney, New South Wales - Farewells" |
|
The Sydney Games of
the XXVII Olympiad are no more. As we enter the tenth month of the year,
the Olympic flame no longer resides in Australia. In four year's
time, it will leave Mount Olympus again and make the short journey to
Athens, capital of Greece, home of the Games. However, the 19
million inhabitants of Australia, rightly proud of their country's
achievements both in successfully organising such a massive event and in
finishing an amazing fourth behind the USA, Russia and China in the
Medal's Table, made sure the Games ended with a bang, not with a whimper. |
| Guinness on my Compass: October 2000 - "Sydney, New South Wales - Every Silver Lining has a Cloud" |
| Here's
another article I penned for the electronic newspaper, the Irish Emigrant,
when in philosophically combative mode... The best Games ever. Of that there is little or no dispute. From an Irish point of view, however, Sydney represented one of our most dismal failures. A nadir in our country's Olympic participation. As I sat in the 35°C heat of another Australian mid-morning in the beautiful Olympic stadium in Homebush Bay, I looked around the crowd. Having just witnessed the Irish Men's 4x100 metre Sprint Relay team unluckily fail to qualify for the semi-finals by the narrowest of margins (1000th of a second - the width of a string vest to be precise), the many Irish present were waving their tricolours with gusto in acknowledgement of the valiant effort of the Irish quartet. Indeed, they had set a new National Record, and one cannot ask more of an athlete that to set a personal best. The trouble is, however, that despite the massive vocal support given to Irish competitors from Stadium Australia in Homebush to Whitewater Stadium in Penrith, from both native Irish and Aussies alike, there was in truth damn all for the followers of the green, white and orange to shout about. The decent showing of our sprinters, certain sailors and equestrians aside, the performance of our athletes left nothing to write home about. Sonia O' Sullivan's exploits served but to highlight the chasm between her and her team-mates. Our yield of one solitary silver medal from the Games, left Ireland ranked a lowly 60th out of the 199 nations competing. True, Ireland's Olympic achievements coming into the Games of the XXVII Olympiad (19 medals since 1928 - a total exceeded by the likes of South Korea and Ukraine this September alone) were hardly the stuff of legend. But we had been informed that our 70-strong Olympic team was the biggest and best prepared Irish squad to ever be sent to compete against the best in the world. To place the blame solely on the shoulders of the athletes themselves would of course be unjust. Our whole sporting ethos needs to be rethought. The Irish attitude of come win, lose or draw, sure we'll have some craic anyway, just doesn't cut ice anymore. If athletes of Irish heritage such as Tom Dolan of the USA and Suzie O'Neill of Australia can set world records and win gold medals in the pool, thus disproving any genetic obstacles to Olympic victory, then the fault must lie elsewhere. Proper funding, professional training, top facilities and long-term youth development - all are noticeably absent on the Irish sporting landscape. If Australia, a young nation of 19 million people, can finish fourth in the medals table (with 16 Gold, 25 Silver and 17 Bronze - 58 in all) behind the American, Russian and Chinese superpowers, while simultaneously being World Cricket and Rugby Champions, then surely there is room for improvement in our international sporting performances. We can't put our perennial underachievement down to bad climate alone. I say these words as an Irishman who revelled in Sonia's 5,000-metre silver - our first athletics medal since John Treacy's Marathon silver in Los Angeles in 1984. Indeed, not since the Games were last held Down Under, in Melbourne in 1956, had Ireland, thanks to Ron Delany's victory in the 1,500 metres, won a medal on the track. Furthermore, if one discounts the efforts of Michelle Smith and her chemist in Atlanta four years ago, then Sonia is Ireland's only female Olympic medallist. Panem et Circenses. Let the politicians in Dail Eireann take note. Looking after the material well being of the people does not suffice. The man and woman in the street need something else to cheer about. Something more than monetary affluence. A reason to feel good about our country and to fly the flag. Hopefully, the lessons learnt down under will be swiftly applied. For it would be a shame if in four years time, our Corkonian champion would again be deemed the only Irish competitor worthy of carrying the national flag at both the opening and closing ceremonies of the next Games in Athens. Gav (7 October 2000) |
| Guinness on my Compass: October 2000 - "Sydney, New South Wales - Dead Scrolls & Squashed Frogs & Chatting with Drag Queens" |
| "Malcolm
and I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls the other day," I told Gemma,
hoping to impress her with my inspired thirst for classical knowledge.
"Really!" she exclaimed in her strong Cork accent.
"What type of music do they play?" I could see that me
trying to explain to her that the scrolls were actually ancient pieces of
parchment that have given scholars of antiquity a deep insight into both
Judaism and early Christianity would perhaps be a forlorn exercise.
"Eh mostly old stuff," I responded, "with an eastern
flavour". I then thought better of continuing the charade, lest
I be cajoled into going to their next "gig", and chanced the
subject. Malcolm, a Scottish barman from the Porterhouse, and I had had a sunny afternoon free and decided to do something cultural. He informed me that the final week of an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls was taking place, so we joined the tourist trail and made for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Walking around the gallery reminded me of that scene from that classic '80s film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", when Ferris (aka Matthew Broderick), his girlfriend (played by Mia Sara) and his hypochondriac best buddy Cameron, kill a few hours in a Chicago art museum. Malcolm's and my approach to it all was equally incredulous and flippant. I mean, how these learned men can tell so much from these garbled scribblings in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, I'll never know. Seriously, all this banging on about "the Wicked Priest" and "the Righteous One". They sound like a heavy metal/hip hop duo. A Hebrew version of Anthrax versus Run DMC. "Follow the gourd, follow the gourd!" I think the Monty Python boys had it right all along. As we examined the strange minuscule writing on certain broken fragments of parchment, which resembled an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, we could have been staring at the football results for all we knew. "Dunfermline 1:2 Queen of the South" quipped Malcolm as he leant forward towards one of the glass screens, behind which certain incomplete ancient verses were kept. But with folded arms and furrowed brows, we tried to look solemn and not to stand out from the other visitors, though in the back of my head I kept thinking "Lake Galilee United 2:0 Little Town of Bethlehem". I managed to restrain my giggles until, beside a display of artefacts unearthed at the excavation site, I laid eyes on a colourful array of didgeridoos. Now that is what I call a serious walkabout! So I made my way quickly for the gift shop before arousing the wrath of my fellow scroll viewers. The gift shop was a discovery in itself. One could do ones shopping for the festive season shop therein. A classical irony methinks, especially as the Jews don't celebrate Christmas. On sale were bars of Dead Sea soap, Dead Sea bath salts, Dead Sea incense, Dead Sea Jewish calendars, Dead Sea jigsaw puzzles (for the kids probably) and even Dead Sea compact discs, full of relaxing spiritual "muzak". Though as the lyrics are sung in Aramaic, for all I know the harmonious voices could be chanting "Here are this week's pools list of score draws and away wins". Anyway, I settled for an excellent hardback coffee table book on the pictorial history of the first 50 years of Israel. The book contains hundreds of black and white images taken in the Holy Land over five decades by an illustrious circle of Magnum photographers, including the great Robert Capa himself. One photo that I really liked was that of a crowded train carriage in Jerusalem. Aboard were a couple of Catholic nuns, an Orthodox priest, a few Arabs and a group of Hassidic Jews. Nowhere else in the world would such a scene be possible, apart from perhaps the departure lounges of JFK of Heathrow airports. As the book was on sale for AUS $44 (27.5 Euro) - one third of the stated price - I bought it and that evening carefully poured over the pages of history that lay between its dust-jacketed covers. Scenes from the end of the British mandate period, the arrival of the huge Jewish Diaspora, Palestinian refugee camps, the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars, Sinai, Jordan, the Mediterranean coast, the Wailing Wall, the Al Asqa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre all fused together in my mind. You can imagine then the spooky feeling I got the next day when news filtered through that a certain zealot, Ariel Sharon, had controversially barged his way up to the Dome on the Rock overlooking east Jerusalem, and sparked off a new Intifada. The effects of this blindly stupid and provocative gesture have even been felt here in faraway Sydney. In the last fortnight, two local synagogues (there is a very sizeable and well-established Jewish community in Bondi Junction) have been attacked with firebombs by angry mobs of more recently arrived Arab immigrants. To be Jewish at the moment is to be not very popular outside the borders of Israel. Not that the children of Isaac were ever over-kindly looked upon by the Christian world, but at least their relations with the Arabs, the children of Ishmäel, were harmonious until the creation of the modern Israeli state. But as long as the wisdom of Solomon takes a back seat to the fanaticism of Sharon, Israel's future will remain precarious. I wonder what Yitzak Rabin would have made of it all? Our jaunt around the Art Gallery of New South Wales was followed by a visit to Mrs Macquaries Chair and a splendid view over Sydney harbour. Malcolm and I then opted for a bout of bat watching in the botanical gardens. Alliteration aside, it was fascinating to view these strange creatures as they hung upside down in the shade of the high tree branches. A quick session of souvenir shopping (there I go again) followed, when I bought a beautiful collection of photos of Australia by Peter Lik, which I will now add to my Gerald Hoberman series from Namibia and South Africa. I think I'll need to move into a museum when I return home. It was nice to wile away some daylight hours like a tourist again. Our nocturnal work schedule rules out much of a social life, as Tom, one of the Irish barmen from Scruffy's beautifully illustrated with his killer chat-up line: "So tell me, are you doing anything at 8am on Monday morning?" Having said that, pulling pints, as opposed to sinking them, is a great way to save money, or at least it would be if I didn't keep adding to my coffee table book collection. I don't even own a coffee table for Christ's sake! But given the state most of the punters are in by the time they fall out of Scruffy's, I have developed a welcome aversion to imbibing excessive amounts of booze. Seriously, there are few opportunities in life that offer a better insight into the social dynamics of human beings than being part of a very small stone cold sober minority in a throng of drunken bowsies, both male and female alike. Nonetheless, I've pretty much got into the swing of the barman's lot now. As Scruffy's were giving me full-time hours, I had to knock the Porterhouse on the head, which was a shame as Gemma, Shelly, Elaine, Deirdre, Daragh, Malcolm and Daniel are a "dacent bunch" to work with. In contrast to the newness of the Porterhouse, Scruffy Murphy's looks like it's seen better days, though you'd be hard pressed to put a date on them. The juxtaposition of the Irish pub and the Chinese gaming room next-door (all owned by the same cartel) might seem incongruous to some. But when you consider that one half of the complex (the pub) is literally a gold mine, while the other half (the gaming room) is an actual goldmine, their twinning makes more sense. Furthermore, the bar is located in the centre of Chinatown, so an oriental twist on the traditional Gaelic theme seems less strange than would otherwise be the case. Gambling seems to be very popular in Australia, second only to the US, I wager, but fortunately apart from the occasional flutter on the Grand National, the Eurovision and the World Cup, I am not in the least tempted by the one arm bandit brigade. Anyway, despite its crumbling décor, Scruffy Murphy's also has its fair share of personalities behind the counter - like Mark, the barman from Ontario, for example. The other night this burly Australian approached the bar and asked for two Bacardi Breezers. Mark duly obliged and then handed him the two bottle tops. "What are these for?" asked the puzzled customer. "You collect them," replied Mark. "If you collect ten, you get a free handbag!" A gutsy exchange you've gotta admit, especially given the size of the guy. But I think that he didn't want to make a scene and thereby draw attention to the fact that he wasn't drinking bourbon and coke or a stubby of Extra Dry, which, it seems, are the liquid staples of real Sydney men folk. Besides, if any of us do ever get into a spot of bother from an unruly customer that can't be sorted out by the soda water spray gun, we can go for Plan B. It's important to have a good Plan B, especially when there's no Plan A. Plan B entails calling on the security staff, half a dozen or so muscle-bound Maoris, who judging by their size, have probably played up front for the All Blacks. I'm even beginning to comprehend their Kiwi accent now, which is quite distinguishable from that of the Australians. But as long as they understand mine if I should "Help!" then I suppose that's the main thing. Anyway, somehow Mark seems to get loads of tips from female customers in the bar. Normally the women in Scruffy's only hand over and above the required amount after four in the morning when they can't be bothered to count all the change that is weighing down their handbags. This was beginning to piss me off until Oliver quipped that as he too only got tips from the men, Mark's feminine financial success must be down to the ladies feeling sorry the poor lad. This seemed a prudent explanation. So, given the fact that I am now used to working nights and spending long hours standing, that I am enjoying the camaraderie behind the bar and the fact that I'm now a relatively senior member of staff, you might think it a tad strange that I've just decided to jack in the job and strap the rucksack to my back once again. True, given that it's an extremely busy watering hole, I don't get the chance to talk much to the customers like I used to when I worked in the James Joyce pub in Brussels. But, even on the busiest of nights in the pub, we always find time behind the bar for the odd splash gunfight or bout of ice cube warfare. Shenanigans at midnight, you might say. We are an eclectic bunch behind the counter at Scruffy's. Apart from my good self, there are a few other Irish (Martin and Kay - the managers & Steven, Tom, Keith, Conor and Karl who work behind the bar like meself). However, most of the staff in the employ of Mr. Murphy are non-Irish. First there's the Scottish Mafia (Sharlane - another manager, Stevie, Morven, Gillian and Alison), then the English posse (Rich, Dan, Shelley, Tinker, Andrea and Oliver), our lone Canadian (Mark) and the local lads (Simon, Olly, Sean and Andrew). Yet I nonetheless have opted to bugger off up north to Queensland. Why? Well, they say that making the decision is always the hardest part and that once you have chosen a certain path, the rest, the details, quickly fall into place. And from my experience, they're not wrong these insightful yet unknown behavioural generalists. For as soon as I opted to leave Sydney to hit the road de nouveau, it was as if a great worry was lifted. Informing my work, my flatmates and changing my flights - this was easily done once I was clear in the course of action. I was even promised my bar job back should I so wish when I return to Sydney. They must have been impressed with my "Squashed Frog" shooter, which Dan from England showed me how to make. The "recipe" for Squashed Frog is a follows - 10 mls of colourless butterscotch schnapps; 10 mls of green Midori liqueur; cover with orange Vok Advokat liqueur (the brains); top with a layer of Bailey's Irish Cream; finally add a few drops of grenadine to disturb the Advokat. Result - you are left with a shot that resembles an amphibian road kill, but which tastes divine. Forget your "B52s", your "Slippery Nipples", your "C*ck Suckin' Cowboys" and your "Quick F*cks" - the "Squashed Frog" is the way to go. But I'm rambling. I was about to explain the reasons for resuming my nomadic existence, even though I am enjoying my work, will miss the guys (and especially the girls) and was even offered a nine to five admin job in the Easts Rugby League Club in Bondi Junction. Well, I suppose its because it's my choice to leave. I haven't been forced into this course of action. I just weighed up my options. Fact - I can earn more money back in Europe than I can here in Australia. Fact - given the time limitations of my Round the World ticket, my time down under is finite. Fact - I am eager to see some of the Aussie outback. Add to this the reality that rainy post Olympic Sydney is not, despite the best effort of the Paralympians, buzzing with life like it was for that gloriously sunny fortnight in September, and that my pal Rob will also be travelling around the Australian hinterland during the next two months. So putting all this together, I came to the conclusion that hitting the trail again was the logical thing to do. Content with the fact that I was able to establish a stable life for myself in "de big shmoke", I now feel free to pack it all in, see the country and go chasing after Sheilas. There'll be plenty more willing immigrants to take up my job and my room. Sydney is used to having a high percentage of transitory dwellers, especially Irish ones. Speaking of transitory dwellers, a friendly, familiar face blew into town. Francesca Ferrandino, my old Torinese pal was on one of her regular jaunts around Australia and had a few days to kill in Sydney. Like when I met Tiff in Mali, it's always nice to see someone from home when you're on your travels. Fortunately I had a couple of days off this week, so after a regular Monday night visit to the Academy Twin cinema in Paddington to see the heart-warming Aussie film "The Dish", we hooked up with her boyfriend, Danny, and decided to go to see a drag show. Sydney has a huge gay scene, large enough to rival San Francisco, and each year its Mardi Gras attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists to the city. So a proper Sydney experience would not be complete without taking in one of these shows. It would be like going to London and not venturing to see a performance in the West End. Given that Oxford Street in Paddington is pretty much gay central in Sydney, we only had to make a brief walk to the Aubury Hotel, where a drag show would be taking place. Given that nearly all gay men are fat free, clean-shaven with closely cropped hair and insist on wearing tight black t-shirts, I wondered if a girl and two obviously straight men would have any trouble entering the gay bar. We had none whatsoever as it turned out. Everyone was very friendly, though Danny and I agreed, for what it was worth, to pretend that we were "together" and that Francesca was our minder! This way, we felt sure, we would be spared any unwanted approaches. However, our subterfuge proved unnecessary. The Aubury is a well-lit, clean bar, with a fun-loving clientele, not the kind of seedy pub with dirty old men one might imagine. The drag show was a blast. The middle-aged hostess, Simone Troy, was very witty and engaging. She (I'll call him "she" just to avoid confusion) sang along to some classic old diva tunes, and introduced the other performers. Most were too tall, wore too much make-up and basically looked like men dressed in women's clothing (which shouldn't come as a surprise, I suppose). The youngest drag queen (I reckon she was no more than 18 years old), however, was pretty stunning and as she mimed along to a couple of Britney Spears' numbers, you really had to stare hard to see if she was a guy or a girl. Francesca kept bitching about how unfair it was that her legs were that good, given that she was a man after all, while I promised myself to stick to light beer until we left the club! Seriously though, we had such a laugh that two days later the three of us headed out to the Newtown Hotel in Newtown, with two of Danny's pals, Raphael and Mark, to take in another show. Once again, the flamboyant Simone Troy was centre stage and once she spotted Francesca (it wasn't hard as she was probably the only real woman in the place), Simone insisted she join her up on the stage. I took out my camera to capture the moment, but Francesca wasn't going to let me get away with that, so beckoning me in Italian, she dragged me up too. Once Simone heard my Irish accent I was a gonner. She asked me if I wanted to take off my top. I politely declined. I didn't want to shock anyone, as unlike all the gay men present, I haven't spent the last six months in the gym. Fortunately, Danny, still pretending to be my "boyfriend" bounded up on the stage to prevent any bizarre slave auction taking place. We then all had our photos taken with Simone and chatted some more. Simone has a tough job I reckon, a bit like a stand up comedian, only with more rouge. I can't wait to get the snaps developed. My photos of the colourful, over the top dresses worn by the Drag Queens, should fit in nicely between my shots of the Masai and Zulu tribes people! Afterwards, I got talking to a sound gay Irish couple from Galway, who cheered me on stage when they hear my Dublin brogue. It has to be said though that if you're under the spotlight on a stage with a drag queen who is bigger than you, and you're surrounded by a crowd of gay men, the cry of "Up Ireland" can be slightly disquieting. Double-edged sword city. In any case, we headed with the lads (perhaps "lads" is the wrong term) from Galway to the nearby Imperial Hotel, which features in the opening scene of the famous Aussie movie, "Priscilla Queen of the Desert". While Francesca, Danny, his mates and I played pool, a group of gay men played ten pin bowling using water bottles as the pins and a frozen chicken as the bowling ball. I don't know if "chucking a chuck" has got a deeper significance in gay circles. I thought it prudent not to ask. We finally said our farewells (or "bye bye darlings") to the boys in the Imperial and headed back to straight-ville. Fransecsa and Danny were leaving early for Perth the next day, so Francesca couldn't end up in her traditional "left-over" state, to which we had become accustomed back in Turin. But it was a suitably bizarre couple of evenings we had out on the town, which I'd heartily recommend to any visitors to the city. All the gay men we met were open and forthright and at no time did we feel threatened, apart maybe from when Simone asked me on stage if I really needed my t-shirt! But it's not only the Drag Queens down under who are straight talking. Your average Aussie, whether gay or straight, old or young, Caucasian or Asian, drunk or sober, is always ready to forward an opinion, be it good or bad. For instance, I happily wore the Tuareg necklace that I bought in Motpi in Mali without comment while I travelled through Africa. But since I arrived in Australia, I've had on average three Australians per day complimenting me on it and asking if it had any special significance. At first I was honest and said that I didn't know if its design has any greater spiritual meaning. But after giving this boring reply for the umpteenth time, I started to invent a colourful panoply of responses. After all, why tell the truth when you can spin an exotic yarn instead. But whatever about handing out the compliments with admirable ease, when it comes to offering negative subjective commentaries (i.e. criticising) the Aussies leave the Irish in the ha'penny place. Check out this review I read in the paper for John Travolta's latest movie, "Battlefield Earth". Try reading it aloud in an Australian accent - you'll see what I mean: Some films are so bad they're good - "Gone in 60 Seconds" for example. Then there are some films that are just plain bad. Then there's "Battlefield Earth. It's fucking awful. Based on the sci-fi novel by Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard, this is ludicrous trash of the first order. In coherent, derivative and noisy, it still manages to be boring. The first 20 minutes or so are passable - if you have a weakness for the kind of cheapo decrepit future envisioned by the "Planet of the Apes" series - but it's best to leave then. Life's to short. Don't waste it." Mmmm. Won't be going to see that one, then. I wish the Irish could be as honest in their opinions as the Aussies. Sure, we'll criticise people behind their backs in a kind of "Et tu Brute" fashion, but when asked to proffer an honest opinion directly at someone we shy away. Like when you get customers in a restaurant bitching about how cold or undercooked or overcooked or tasteless or fatty their steak is, until an unsuspecting waiter trundles over to their table to ask how their steak is. In an instant the slightly reheated piece of fatty grizzle on their plate will be talked up to the status of the finest of bovine cuts fit for a king. Nobody in Ireland wants to make a scene. They'd sooner make a quick exit while smiling at the hapless manager and then once outside they'd tell all their friends how crap the steak (and the service) is in that particular establishment, thus inflicting a slow death by word of mouth on the restaurant. All for the sake of a dodgy cut of sirloin, which could have been replaced, had the customer bothered to call a spade a spade. But perhaps in the modern "go get 'em", "greed is good" Celtic Tiger Ireland such practices have ceased. So in an effort to reacquaint myself with this new Ireland which has apparently changed so much, yet has still spawned the shower who, clad in their replica Glasgow Celtic or GAA shirts, crowd out Scruffy's every night and fall out the door at 6am singing "The Fields of Athenry", I purchased Pete McCarthy's hilarious book "McCarthy's Bar". Penned while I was traipsing around Morocco and Senegal, far from anyone or anything Irish, this Celtic travelogue is akin to Tony Hawks' "Round Ireland with a Fridge" crossed with Joseph O'Connor's "The Irish Male at Home and Abroad". It's all about the author, who is half-English and half-Irish, on a voyage of discovery and self-discovery in the land of his mother. To give you a feel for his brand of humour, here are a few funny, yet insightful, excerpts from its pages: "It must have been sometime around eleven when I realised that, in a very profound and real way, Con the barman was my best friend, and quite probably a close relative. It was important he should know how I really felt. So I told him I didn't feel English. "You sound English to me, sorr." "But it's what's inside that counts, Con. In here! And I." I knew it was somehow important to convey that this wasn't the drink talking; that I meant it, and what's more, I'd still mean it the next day. So I grabbed him and shouted. "I.inside I feel Irish. I know where I belong!" To emphasise my sincerity, I knocked a drink over. "Ah, that's great, sorr. Good luck to ye now." "Id briefly considered spending the holiday in Dublin, but I find I like it less since the ruthless development and marketing of Temple Bar. Continental café culture has arrived, a forced planting of non-indigenous chrome counters, almond-flavoured latte, and seared yellowfin tuna in balsalmic lemongrass and rhubarb jus. Japanese besuited media ponces sit in windows sipping bottles of over-priced cooking lager, imported from Mexico, and other top brewing spots, to the banks of the Liffey. Plain, unadorned, authentic pubs, previously unchanged for decades, now reek of new wood and paint, as they're gutted and refurbished to conform to the notion of Irishness demanded by the stag nights from Northampton and conference delegates from Frankfurt who fill the streets, interchangeable in their smug fat smiles and Manchester United replica shirts. Last time I was in Dublin I met a German who actually believed that "Manchester United" was a place in Ireland." "We went to visit my Auntie Annie one Sunday afternoon, straight after a massive lunch of chicken and ham and cabbage and potatoes back in Drimoleague. The moment we arrived there were bottle of stout for my dad and me, even though I was only fourteen and hated it. There were soft drinks for my mum and sisters and little brother; then Annie served us a massive lunch of chicken and ham and cabbage and potatoes. Pogged to the eyeballs from the lunch we'd just finished and racked with guilt at being given enough food to keep her and Uncle Willy for a year, we forced it down with clenched fists and the backs of spoons, while Annie looked on, smiling, desperate to serve the trifle. There was just time for a quick pray, then it was back to Drimoleague, and a table groaning with cold meats and hot potatoes. Sandwiches were served at bedtime for anyone who was peckish." "It was half past five as I walked up the gravel drive to the front door of the B&B. After several frustrating minutes trying to open it with my bedroom key, I tried the front door one instead. As I lurched inside, Mrs O'Sullivan appeared, just in time to see me pause to admire the luminous Virgin Mary again, and knock it off the wall. Politely declining the six rounds of sandwiches on the tray she was holding, I edged gingerly along the hallway to the wrong bedroom door, and opened it. I wake the next morning around eleven. Out in the polished parquet hallway, Mr O'Sullivan was bolting the Blessed Virgin back on the wall with a Black and Decker, while his son played Robopriest on the computer. I paid Mrs O'Sullivan and thanked her. "Ah," she said, "you're looking grand considering. Isn't it true that Mrs Thatcher only used to sleep three hours a night when she was in charge of you?" Perhaps so. If she went around all day feeling like this, it would explain an awful lot." So if you're keen to learn about the Irish and behold a quirky portrayal of the various visitors to our shores, English, continental European and Americans alike, then add "McCarthy's Bar" to your Christmas shopping list. I have to say that one of the things I like about staying in Wendy and Viola's apartment is that there is no television. This has given me time not only to catch up on my reading, but also to tune into the BBC World Service on my trusty little radio, something I have not really done since bush camping in Botswana. In a way, it's like being reacquainted with an old friend - familiar voices and familiar jingles. Something constant in a journey of change. In any case, my free time hours finally let me read the second novel by Alex La Guma that I had bought in Cape Town, "In the Fog of the Seasons' End". Written in the year of my birth, it is a powerful thought provoking work as I had anticipated, especially in its graphic portrayal of the white South African police's inhumane methods of interrogation. Yet for a novel recounting such racist violence, it does have it's moment of sublime beauty: "He had met Frances for the first time at a fun-fair. He came out of the late evening gloom into the tungsten glare of coloured lights strung on poles and from booth to booth. Loudspeakers crashed out strident music that underlined the general clamour, the roar of the dodgems, the shrill screams of girls swung into mid-air on the Ferris wheel. Under the red, green and blue bulbs the target guns snapped like sticks of dried wood and wooden balls thumped into the canvas barriers behind the coconut sky. He was on the Ferris wheel being lifted upwards and then lowered again into a pale orange light. The wheel went round and round vertically and he rose and fell with the motion. The light teased his eyes, and then somebody was tugging him from side to side while he swung up and down so that he lurched limply, unable to resist, like a rag doll in the jaws of a terrier." "The blue evening fell like a curtain over the last act of the day. The outside air was cool and approaching autumn touched the weather with a warning finger from afar. The lamps had not come on yet and along the street people sat in dim doorways or on verandas, drab phantoms and tawdry spectres of saints among the ruins of abandoned cathedrals, like characters in some obscurely metaphysical play. A cigarette glowed here and there against the background of murmured gossip and sporadic laughter like noises heard in the wings." Now it's my turn to sit in the wings and listen to the murmured gossip and sporadic laughter around me. I just clocked off from my final shift in Scruffy's three hours ago, determined to have a couple of jars and then bugger off back to Bellevue Hill. That was before Stevie, Keith, Simon and Tinker started feeding me free shooters, including the ubiquitous "Squashed Frog". I can see my sobriety, so well held since the end of the Olympics a month ago, slowly slipping away. But feck it! I deserve a bit of a sesh. When I first passed by Scruffy Murphy's, desperate for employment and dejected from not getting a job at the Olympics, I spent an evening in the main bar (the night I wrote about earlier with the Nigerians and the Ulstermen). Philomena and Mez, now both departed (not dead, just gainfully employed elsewhere) had offered me a trial behind the bar and thus buoyed by this apparent strike for success in a sea of dejection, I settled down by the counter. That's when I got talking to Stevie (the Hun), and the idea of actually pulling pints again really took hold. And here I am now almost two months later, separated by the counter from the same Scotsman as he supplies me with concoctions from the top shelf gratis. Sometimes time really does fly. I don't know if it's the drink talking, but I'll miss the gang from Scruffy's, especially the girls! Of course on the outside I'll remain reserved, blasé even. For this year I'm collecting farewells like beer mats. The gang in Turin, my family, the Dragoman posse and now the Sydney massive. I reckon I've a few adieus left in me. Not many mind. I'm looking for the words to sum up what I feel, but I don't need to. The band behind me has usurped my loquacious prose with the first few bars of a song that they are proceeding to murder. It's called "Driftowood" and it's written by the English group, Travis. Just the kind of valedictory, melancholy ballad that appeal to people like me who insist on writing pseudo-meaningful essays in bars at midnight, instead of conversing with strangers, as the tradition of Irish pubs would have. I'm babbling aren't I? So I'll let the boys take it away. "No-one is an island, nothing is set in stone, Home is where the heart is, but your heart it had to roam. So, I'm sorry that you turned to driftwood, but you've been drifting for a long, long time." So I suppose that despite my occasional bouts of self-doubt, I should not ignore the fact that people I did not know six weeks ago, are making sure I remain well supplied on the beverage front, without having to put my hand in my pocket. Sometime, somewhere, somehow along the way, I must have done something right. All that remains now is to catch the late night 380 bus for the last time out to Bondi, try not to fall asleep en route, and get packing. For this evening more colourful capers are on the horizon as my time in New South Wales runs its course. A plane to Cairns and Halloween high jinx await. The chase resumes. New places, new adventures, new stories. Till then, I'll leave you with my reworking of the famous song from the "Sound of Music", which I've adapted to my Sydney experience of the past month. "Dead scrolls and squashed frogs and chatting with drag queens, these are a few of my favourite things." Gav (30 October 2000) |
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