Observations and self-pity

So three months on this massive island and I'm still grappling with the cultural implications of living upside down. By turns it's all so familiar here: the people; the language; the fact that I can't find a babysitter; but then so foreign: the ubiquitous scrap-booking (no really; why?); the refrigeration of fresh dog-food in the supermarkets, right next to the trays of lamb chops and chicken necks (dry heave); the way cashiers round off every transaction to the nearest dollar since reaching into the till to retrieve your 3 cents change is really too much trouble.

Socks for sale, only used once! $2

One thing that has become very clear -- and not surprising considering the living costs -- is the relative frugality of the way of life here; nothing is thrown away that can be reused, sold, swapped. I mentioned in an earlier post about the buy, sell, swap groups on Facebook, and have been curious to discover that these aren't the preserve of large, expensive items such as fridges or bookshelves, but in fact any old tat, ranging from an old pair of trainers ($20) to a plastic tupperware dish ($1). And regardless how knackered the item looks in the picture, it will invariably come with the dubious claim 'only used once!'. 

Makes me wish I'd brought all the crap I'd bagged up and dragged to the nearest St. Vincent De Paul shop back in Ireland; I could have recouped the cost of shipping it over with Pickford's, with a few dollars left over for a cheap box of Sauvignon Blanc from my local, demurely-named bottle-shop, Liquor in the Valley, (I kid you not. Is my mind in the gutter or does that sound a bit rude, and if so -- was the double entendre intentional? If so -- why?)

One thing is clear; there is a social hierarchy in Oz, of which the poor, downtrodden-looking Aboriginies seem to be right at the bottom of the heap. In fact I've yet to see a healthy, prosperous looking Aboriginal person -- not that I've seen many at all, they are largely hidden from view. Invariably they are damaged looking souls; often limping, missing an eye, scarred, neglected, drunk. Public opinion seems to fall into one of two camps: that the Abbo's are feckless drunkards, pandered to by a restitutive government keen to atone for past crimes, or a sad, lost people, ill-equipped to navigate their way around a hostile world, deserving of our compassion. To me, judging by the hollow-eyed stares, they look like they've just given up.

And finally....

My blog post on the Irish Times website last week stirred up quite a bit of controversy, and considering the juxtaposition of the melodramatic headline 'This time, emigration is a life sentence not a lifestyle choice' against a smug-looking picture of me and DH sitting in the Laughin' Barrel vineyard quaffing a nice bottle of Chardonnay (not the most tear-jerking of images) it's no surprise.

I didn't quite think that one through really although of course I didn't write the headline, but the quote was taken from the piece. I chose that picture because I wanted to impress the point that we were happy with where we were; to avoid the whiff of victimhood that can accompany these personal accounts, like one of those vile stories in Chat magazine featuring a photo of some whey-faced, track-suited hag, sitting staring vacantly at the camera, gnawed fingernails encircling a mug of tea, 'My Tragedy: My nan had my boyfriends baby!'

Some comments were understandably critical: Poor diddums, crying into her Chardonnay in the sunshine, what a bleedin' tragedy. Could I really be so deluded that I believed that we deserved pity?

Boohoo, the Chardonnay just isn't chilled properly!

Well of course not, and although I stated this clearly in the piece, I'll reiterate it to be clear: while I didn't want to leave Ireland this time -- anyone who follows this blog will know this -- I don't at any level feel that living up here in this beautiful part of Australia is a life sentence. It's undeniably a privilege. What saddens me -- and the point I was trying to express in the piece -- is the fact that for now and possibly ever, Ireland is not a viable option for a life or a future. We have a home there, a family, a history; it's not easy to turn our backs on all that with the very strong possibility that we may never be able to resume that life, that our children will grow up strangers to their cousins, uncles, aunts, culture; their country. The life sentence I was referring to was the life unlived in Ireland, not the one we're living here.

On being a bit thick.....

It pains me to admit this, but I simply must get it off my chest -- I don't really understand politics. There, I've said it. This fact was never more explicit than last week when I spent several pleasurable hours curled up on my hideously tasteless but much loved chaise lounge, reading the late great Christopher Hitchens's Hitch-22 (an act which necessitated one-year-old spending an unhealthy amount of hours sat in front of Cbeebies, but hey, it's educational to watch a forty-year-old ex-drama student  -- dressed up in a costume made out of toilet rolls and cereal boxes -- pretending to be a robot. Isn't it?)

I realise that viewing my slim grasp on the political system through the prism of that of one the greatest intellectuals of our time is probably setting myself up for abject failure, and really I should be aiming for a more even contest with, say,  Jedward for example -- against whom I would surely have a fighting chance of outwitting (but not of out-twitting!)  -- but then I was never one to make things easy for myself.

I really need this book

I understand the basics of course; well sort of. There is an extreme left, and there is an extreme right -- both of which are a bit scary -- with degrees of leftiness and rightiness reducing as we approach the middle, where inevitably the party insipid enough to be voted into government resides -- well in our part of the world anyway (yes, yes, I realise that in other places the scary people seem to be quite popular, so popular in fact that some of them stay in government for oh, decades). And the fact that I still struggle to differentiate between my left and right doesn't much matter when we're talking about politics, it's only really relevant when Sat Nav is directing me to the nearest brewery.

Thicker than this

Hitchens writes eruditely about the political activism which dominated his life, and during the course of the book he describes himself by turns as Socialist, Trotskyist and Marxist, among others, making it necessary that I keep Wikipedia and dictionary.com open on the laptop beside me at all times in order to navigate my way through this fascinating and eloquent memoir. The whole enterprise, however, left me feeling thicker than Hugh Laurie's Prince Thickie in Blackadder the III.

So politics -- from the single transferable vote, to the IMF --  leave me mystified. This lead me to consider how many other topics have me stumbling about in the dark, and was dismayed to realise there was really rather a lot, some of which are detailed below -- although this list is by no means exhaustive. 

Take cars for example. I had a flat tyre the other day, and by unhappy chance my mobile phone battery was dead, meaning I couldn't phone DH to demand he do something about the situation. Disregarding a vague doubt about the wisdom of driving the car at all at this point, I opted to drive slowly from Darlington to Midland where I was relieved to spot a tyre yard.

- 'I have a flat tyre' I told a man wearing a boiler-suit, 'I need you to, to....' I struggled for the word.

- 'Fix it?' he asked slowly, bending his head slightly, as if talking to someone with special needs.

- 'Yes, fix it, thank you,!' I had to stop myself from clapping my hands with pleasure, 'can I sit in the car while you do it?'

Tqwenty minutes and $20 later, the problem was resolved -- a lesson in capitalism for the slow learner I suppose -- although he could have told me I needed to replace the entire car and I would have believed him, since anything involving mechanics leaves my brain in a permanent state of 'whev's' and is consigned to the dusty pile of 'stuff I don't need to know because I'm married to a man'. Although this system only works if I keep my phone charged, something which DH also generally takes responsibility for since plugs and cables confuse me too.

Another topic which leaves my brain in a stupefied state is the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, which I find as dull and difficult to follow as a talk on Japanese cinematography. In Japanese. And if I manage to stay awake all the way through, I'm likely to interject every twenty minutes or so with questions such as 'but I thought the guy with the beard was a goodie,' thus clearly demonstrating that not only do I have no understanding of the plot but can't even distinguish between the characters. The Harry Potter movies leave me in a similar state of confusion (I mean please, why doesn't 'he who cannot be named' aka Voldemort -- who is constantly named by the way -- just kill the annoying little specky bastard...why so many movies?). And as for the Matrix? Oh god let's not even go there.... although judging by the look of total confusion on Keanu Reeves face, I'm pretty sure he is as much in the dark as I am.

I once dated a bloke who immediately identified this doltish streak in me, and chose to exploit it for his own pleasure. An employee of the Department of Social Welfare, as it was then known, he told me that he worked in a particularly secretive and high security section of the department, and should I wish to phone him at work I would need to give a four digit code before being permitted to speak to him. Eagerly I wrote the number down on a slip of paper and tucked it into my purse.

The first time I phoned him at work I was met with a gruff voice -

- 'code please'

- 'oh, hang on' (digging in purse) 'OK, 7....4...8....3'

- 'Name please?'. I gave it.

- 'You are such a spaz!! Hahahahahhahaha!' a familiar voice cackled down the phone, 'you believe everything I say! mwahhahahhaha!'

To be fair, I could see the funny side, although the 'it's not you, it's me' speech he delivered a week later outside Trinity was less funny.

Yes my thickness is only outstripped by my gullibility and sometimes I truly believe my inner blonde is screaming to get out. Of course this won't stop me reading above my station in the vain hope that eventually some cleverness will rub off, and perhaps one day I might manage a foray beyond the first page of oh anything by James Joyce.