Friday 28 September 2007

Yuck!

I’m a bit grossed out and disturbed.

I have a rash on my lower right leg. I’ve had a slight rash there for quite some time, but lately I’ve noticed it spreading, so I thought I should do something about it. But who has time to go to the doctor? Ok, I have time – let’s face it, I don’t actually do anything at work – but I don’t know if I can be bothered to sit around at the clinic for hours with annoying, waiting room people, to see a doctor who looks bored to see me and disappointed I don’t have a really jazzy disease. So I did the modern thing and surfed the Net. Nothing like a bit of self-diagnosis!

The thing is, descriptions of skin ailments aren’t terribly helpful without pictures. And the pictures! I swear for every ailment, they’ve chosen the wrinkliest, saggiest old men with the most advanced cases of skin festeration that they could find. Trust me, my rash doesn’t look anything like those pestilences. It’s just an innocent little pink thing!

I don’t trust those pictures. I picked up scabies once in Thailand; I had a few raised white bumps with black dots in the centre, on my wrist and creeping onto my forearm. Not nice. But it looked NOTHING the hideous, hideous photo of rotting humanity I found on the Internet.

I hope nobody in the office was watching the computer screen over my shoulder. Rumours could fly and I’d soon have a whole wing of the office to myself.

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Roamsome Dove Part II - Final Destination

It turned out the dove actually was in the house after all – I KNEW IT!!! It takes more than a small bird to pull a fast one on me.

I discovered it the next morning as I was checking my e-mails. The cat had finally managed to stir herself from the back of the house where she’d been comatose for the past 12 hours or so, strolled in, and miaowed at me. Then she cocked her head at a funny angle, hunkered down low to the ground and started stealthily creeping towards the sofa. I knew something was up so I dumped her outside the room and looked under the sofa. It took my eyes a minute or so to adjust to the darkness, but there the dove was, stashed all the way back to the wall - while we were at work on Friday it had evidently walked all the way from the back to the front of the house. Pretty good for a sick bird. The most remarkable thing about this is that the cat had had the run of the house all night, but hadn’t realized the bird was there. Bless that cat’s slothfulness! Clearly this is a dove with nine lives. So that was two down.

Disaster struck later on Saturday. The Man and I returned from shopping to find feathers and drops of blood all over the floor. We had left the dove in a box on a chair. The bird had managed to jump out of the box, but it got stuck between the bars of the chair and struggled frantically. I don’t know how much damage it did to itself, but I don’t think it was good.

Three lives down…poor thing. It must feel like one of the kids in ‘Final Destination’, being stalked by death (and before you think, 'doves don’t watch TV’ – think again. This one has no choice).

It’s Tuesday and the dove is still with us, and there have been no more near-death experiences (except when the man took it out of the box to change the newspaper lining, and dropped it splat on its back – poor little bugger). We moved it to a better box, and the Man threaded a twig through the holes in the box, to serve as a perch. It’s eating, and is less docile now than it was on Saturday afternoon, which is a good sign. This morning as I was filling the kettle I heard a faint ‘hooo, hooo’ sound, like the sound of someone blowing gently across the rim of a bottle. The dove was singing! (Either that or it had spotted another dove outside and was crying weakly “Help! Help!” But I prefer to think it was singing). Interesting, because although our back yard is often full of doves, I’ve never heard their song before.

I'll be keeping you updated!

Saturday 22 September 2007

Roamsome Dove

Somewhere in my house a dove is most probably roaming free. No idea where it is – it could be behind the washing machine, under the bed, on a bookshelf, etc. It could be stashed at the back of a kitchen cupboard.

The worst part of this is the ‘probably’. It’s the uncertainty.

Two days ago the Man rescued this dove from the road on his way home from work. He doesn’t know what had happened to it before he came on the scene, but it was unable for some reason to fly away, and local cats were closing in on it. He put it on a cardboard box lid, put the lid in a big basket, and covered the whole thing up with a towel.

By this morning it had been in the box for two nights. When we lifted the towel, it sat motionless, staring with beady eyes. We weren’t sure if it had touched the food we’d given it – it didn’t even seem to have changed position for the whole time it was there. But I felt it was a good sign that it had survived this far; I think that injured birds die overnight.

I reckoned it was time that we took it outside to see if it would fly away. I called up the Man this afternoon from work, and asked him if he would try it when he got home from work. He gets home a lot earlier than I do and I thought it was best to try it early, while it was still fully light. He said he would.

When I got home this evening, the cat was sitting outside. I wondered if the Man was coaxing the dove out of its box in a delicate operation, and had put the cat out for obvious reasons. Rather than barging in, I decided to call him first.

“Hi, Sweetie. I’m standing outside,” I trilled. “Did the bird go?”

“Ummm, I’m not sure” was the hesitant reply.

“How can you not be sure?” I said, impatiently.

“Well…it was there in the pot plant this morning, and when I got in, it was gone.”

Pause. Only my darling Man could think that was a normal sentence. Sometimes you have to prod him gently to get something intelligent out of him. I took a deep breath.

“Ohhhhhkaaaaaaay. What was it doing in the pot plant in the first place, Darling?”

“I wanted to see if it would fly around!”

“And, when was it in the pot plant?”

“This morning when I went to work.”

“So you let it out, and didn’t put it back in the box…?”

“Well, it just…disappeared.” He replied, sounding bemused.

“So, has the dove been flying around loose in the house all day while we’ve been at work?”

“I don’t know…”

Deep breaths, Sprite, deep breaths.

“You knew about this when I called you this afternoon to talk about letting it go, and you didn’t see fit to mention that a WILD, LOUSE-RIDDEN BIRD HAS BEEN FLYING AROUND OUR HOUSE ALL DAY?” I grated.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I thought I might find it!” (like a small boy)

The weirdest thing is that he doesn’t think it’s at all weird that we’ve lost a DOVE in our house.

We’ve searched for it high and low. The only trace of it is two feathers near the fridge. The Man’s theory is that it flew out through the window in our room. The only thing is, this convalescent dove would have had to have negotiated its way through the house to the bedroom, noticed the slightly open window near the ceiling, flown up to it and squeezed through the hole. Unlikely? Maybe, but I guess no more unlikely than any of the hiding places that it could be in since we searched the house.

I just don’t know what to do about the cat now. Do we force her to stay outside, just in case the dove is somewhere inside? It would be so awful if we woke up tomorrow to be presented with the bloody corpse of the bird we had rescued. On the other hand, it would be pretty sad if we left our home comforts-loving kitty outside for days and the dove isn’t even here. I’m also worried that in a few days we’ll notice this putrid stink, and find the bird dead down the back of a piece of furniture.

Well, all I can do is assume it got out through the bedroom…and keep checking the shadows for a silent, beady-eyed presence.

Thursday 20 September 2007

Party Politics

I’ve been on the edge of my seat this week, ever since Sunday when John Howard threatened to resign.

The thing is, the Man and I are planning to have an election party on the day of – you guessed it – the election. Actually, it could be described more accurately as an ‘Out John Howard’ party. So you can see we attach a certain importance to Howard actually fighting the election. We could have an ‘Out Liberals’ party, I suppose, but the venom many of us feel towards John Howard personally would add that extra je ne sais crois and encourage an enthusiastic turn-out.

Besides, I spent AGES of company time working on a multi-media PowerPoint invitation (with sound and flashy text effects) and I will be crushed if I can’t send it.

So, I was pretty pleased to hear about their improved opinion poll results this week. Overjoyed, even. Wouldn’t it just serve me right if they ended up winning the election? Noooooo!!!!

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Driving Him Crazy

Last night I had a troubled dream in which I was driving out-of-control in a city somewhere, lurching around the road and shocking the drivers and pedestrians around me.

Actually, it was only a slightly exaggerated version of my driving lesson yesterday afternoon. My subconscious obviously took it to heart. The Man is my driving teacher. He morphs into this cruel, judgemental drill sergeant type immediately before my driving lessons and turns back into his normal, mild(er) self immediately after. Coincidence?

Here’s a short extract of what a stowaway in our car would have heard at around 4:00 yesterday afternoon:

Me: Sooooo…the parking lights are here, normal beam is here…what’s this thingy?
The Man: WE DID THIS LAST LESSON! That’s for full beam!
Me: Ok, ok! I’m just reviewing to make double sure.
The Man: Look, just drive. Pull out now…
Me: I need to adjust the mirror. Wait – how do I adjust the mirror again?
The Man: Pull out.
Me: Ok, checking the mirrors…
The Man: YOU’VE GOT TO BE CONFIDENT! JUST PULL OUT! God, I’m missing the rugby for this…YOU DIDN’T LOOK!!!!!!!
Me: I was going to but you upset me!
The Man: This isn’t a game, you know. Driving is life or death. Now take the next left…You swung out too far again! That’s SUCH a bad habit, you need to break it now. That’s how old people drive.
Me: I think it’s because I was worried about that car sticking out on the corner…
The Man: I don’t want you to talk about it. I want you to do it right FIRST TIME. The road is no place for mistakes. One mistake and you’re dead. It’s about getting from A to B SAFELY. Next left.
Me: I think that was better this time! Don’t you think it was better?
The Man: Well it ought to be. Go faster now.
Me: Ummm…there are lots of cats on this street.
The Man: Turn right here.
Me: That was a good turn, wasn’t it?
The Man: Then left. SLOW DOWN!!! This is a dangerous bit, it’s so narrow here.
Me: Uhhhhh…there’s a car ahead. Oh my God, what do I do!
The Man: Pull in. DON’T PANIC!!!!
Me: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don’t know where to gooooooooooooo!!!!
The Man: PULL IN!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!
Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!....Phew.
The Man: I can’t believe you! You shouldn’t panic like that! Keep your foot over the brake!
Me: I did! I do! Ooooooh…there’s a car behind us!
The Man: IT’S OK. Just keep going and don’t slow down! I’m so nervous now.
Me: Me too. Who has right of way here? Should I let him go?
The Man: No, you can go. He looks like an arrogant bastard. The people who live round here think learners like you shouldn’t be on the road. Actually, you shouldn’t be.
Me: (Lovingly) So, are you enjoying your Sunday drive?
The Man: Stop slamming your foot down on the brake like that. Honestly, you’re always going on about how good you are at ballet –
Me: (Really hurt) Hey, I never say that!
The Man: - so try and apply those coordination skills to something useful.
Me: I’m getting tired now. Can we stop?
The Man: Ok. Maybe the game will still be on.

I’ve only had three lessons so far. He’s so hard on me. Before I’d had any lessons, I used to dream about getting in a car and driving around fairly competently, dodging the police (I was unlicensed even in my dreams!) Now I have horror dreams of hurtling down narrow suburban streets threatening the property and personal safety of all around me. The Man’s lessons must be damaging me psychologically.

Other news this weekend: My friend and I went to Kirribilli House on Sunday. Apparently it’s only open to the public one day a year, or more rarely. It’s SO nice. I would love to live there. The décor is pretty bad – really old person; it made me quite nostalgic for my granddad – but the tableware was first rate! I experienced a sudden, powerful urge to go shopping for crystal wineglasses and silver salt cellars. Lovely! It wasn’t all fun, though. There were two houses, the Admiralty House and Kirribilli House, and for each we had to queue for about an hour, under the surprisingly hot sun. We spent a lot of money on drinks from the boy scout stall. (I guess I don't begrudge them the money. Who can say no to a darling, enterprising little boy scout? If I ever have sons, I definitely hope they’ll be scouts!) But we got our picture taken with the Governor-General. Just as it was being taken, this idiot old man came up and introduced himself, so in the picture, the Governor-General is actually looking away from us. It looks like we've been superimposed or something.

It was a tiring day, but as my friend said, it’s good that we went, and it means we don’t have to do it again!

Saturday 15 September 2007

Identity Crisis!

After a coffee date with a friend on Wednesday, during which I repeatedly told her I wouldn’t join Facebook because I thought it was lame and loserish, I joined Facebook.

I’m not sure why I did it. I didn’t actually think about it. But at some point during my day of boredom at work yesterday, I found myself on the page signing up. The part of the conversation where my friend stressed how much time you can waste on there without realizing must have swayed me subconsciously. Plus I am mildly interested in stalking people I once knew, and of course, like everyone, ex-boyfriends.

I even gave Facebook my real name, despite misgivings. You have to submit a first and last name, as I discovered, and I couldn’t be bothered to invent a fake one.

Once I’d joined, I did a search on people with my last name. It’s an unusual surname – from my expertise in obscure hamlets in the Yorkshire dales, I have deduced that my lineage originated in a swamp in North Yorkshire - and I’d always assumed there were only a handful of us in existence, and all closely related to me. Imagine my shock and horror when I discovered there’s a girl with my exact name – first, middle and last – living it up in London.

It’s like a personal intrusion! Like someone else has my life! A name is so personal – it really is your main source of identification if you think about it – and becomes part of who you are. Especially as I thought I was the only person in the world called that. I spent most of my life (pre-Internet) thinking that my close family were the only ones with our surname, so it’s a shock to discover not only people I’ve never heard of with my last name, but another Sprite, no less!

She could commit crimes and people would think it was me! I wonder if she’s ever done searches on the Internet and found me and had the same thoughts.

She looks a bit like a party animal from her picture. You know, the kind of person who is sozzled and twirling a wine glass in every picture and has about 8,000 ‘friends’, also sozzled, wine-glass carriers. I’m not sure she is up to the responsibility of carrying my name.

It’s freaky, and I’m…troubled.

That’s all. My employers actually gave me some work to do today so I don’t have time to hone and tone this post into the usual perfection.

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Drought at Work

I am so bored at work at the moment.

Don't get me wrong - in principle, I'm not unfulfilled being the office dogsbody/bottom feeder. As long as I have plenty going on, I’m ok with being the dumb brunette who photocopies the agendas and stuff. I don’t mind underachieving as long as it keeps me busy. But seriously, I have so little going on right now, all I do all day is surf the net. It’s destroying my eyesight and making my shoulders chronically tense.

Every now and then throughout the day I do a roll call of my body parts to check everything’s still answering to HQ. It’s a bit like travelling Economy class. I’m probably at risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis. I should wear pressure bandages to work (is that right?), or take an aspirin every morning to thin my blood.

The highlight of my week so far has been attending a presentation on something really boring, as a representative of my team. It’s kind of laughable that I got volunteered to be a rep for this. I have no clue what the business is about – I don’t care either so avoid learning anything – and my boss volunteered me because he didn’t give a shit and couldn’t spare anyone valuable. So I sit in at these meetings with all these grey, faded people who are about 70 years older than me, and secretly read under the table. (It’s like being back at school.) My boss gets to feel all noble that he’s given me something more than photocopying to do, and I pretend that I really appreciate the opportunity to ‘find out more about the business’. (That’s the phrase I always use. And I fawn a bit while I’m saying it.)

I shouldn’t complain about my cushy, do-nothing job. It’s just that I sometimes feel like everyone’s forgotten I exist! Surreal. I really need to get myself enrolled in some further study, to make good use of this time, before my boss notices how under-utilized I am and loads me up with work. And it’s not like I never do anything - sometimes I’m snowed under. Just not at the moment.

Moral of the story: don’t take an arts degree.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

APEC Protest - An Eyewitness Account

It’s finally all over. The politicians have gone, the roads are re-opening, the word ‘APEC’ can no longer be overheard in the office any more, like it never happened.

I went to bed at 8:30 on Friday night, not feeling very well, and the next morning I still felt a bit off. But no way was I going to miss the protest!

What can I say? It was weird. Grim-faced police were everywhere, in military formation. It was like something from old Nazi footage, or rare film glimpses into despotic Asian regimes. Of course I’d been expecting the heavy police presence but knowing is not the same as experiencing something for yourself.

As some of the news channels reported, there was an upbeat, almost carnival atmosphere, at least at the beginning when we rallied round Town Hall. There were all your usual demo types – the hippies young and old, students, shaven-headed lesbians, wacky hair people, drummers (they were good!) etc. Lots of average looking people too, including the Man and me, and old people. We covered the street outside Town Hall as well as the Town Hall area itself. There were heaps of police looking on, and huge police van/bus type things blocking off the road towards Circular Quay. No-one seemed too bothered. It was your standard protest atmosphere. Several speakers addressed the crowd but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I think the speakers were facing in the opposite direction to me, or maybe I was just too far away. It went on for a while – at least an hour – and I was certainly ready when we finally started moving. I felt like a ripple of excitement went through the crowd.

So it was a pretty upbeat group that started up the road towards Hyde Park. Expressionless police lined the streets on either side of us. Thousands were there. The Man stopped walking and started watching the march instead, and I had a go at him, saying we should be marching, not standing still (yup, that’s the kind of person I am!). But it turned out to be a good choice because then we got to see the sights! One group drew to a halt near us and pulled out a US flag. Then a lighter. I admit to feeling a thrill of horror – why? Social conditioning I guess – and I thought surely he can’t be going to burn it. (I can’t say I’m a big fan of flag burning. It seems a bit pathetic, like the ferals you see on television, burning the US flag in the Middle East. I might support their cause, but seriously, have some class!) Anyway, they drew a crowd in about two seconds flat so that I could barely see what was going on, but yes, they did burn it, though it fizzled rather flamed. And I was feeling so defiant and provoked by the police that I was glad they had burned it, and I hoped that shitty police commissioner was appalled.

There was another drama when this group of black-suited young guys carrying signs saying stuff like ‘Billionaires for Bush’ (ok, I don’t remember what it was exactly but they’re on one of the news videos on the internet) were doing a bit of question and answer with the crowd on the fringe, parodying the pro-Bush camp and pantomiming their delight in war and exploitation. It was all a satire, and I think everyone realized this, except for a policewoman who I heard saying into her radio ‘We’ve got a situation here.’ The police took away the guys’ signs.

Yeah, we have a situation – an IQ-deficit in the state police. But the guys refused to be goaded. Seriously, what do the police think? That we're animals?

Once we were nearly at the end of the march (and it wasn’t a long route) I looked back. There were heaps of people at our end of the march, only a smattering of people in the middle, and lots at the back – moving back the way they came, towards the police vehicles. Something was up. I assume now that the crowd was pulling towards the arrests and stuff that you might have seen on TV. Anyway, there was no way I wanted to go anywhere near it the crowd was getting ugly.

The atmosphere was tenser at this point. The threat of violence was in the air –but on the part of the police, not the protesters.

Now I’m not the most observant of people, and it took me a minute or two to realize that we’d come to the end of the march and were confronted with a row of robo-cop style federal police. I was pretty tired by then. I wasn’t sure which way everyone else had gone. I could see some people jumping up the bank of the park and picking their way through the flowerbeds, but I thought that could hardly be the official route. We couldn’t go back, obviously, and continuing up the road on the other two sides was out of the question because the robo-cops had it sealed off. So we dithered for a while, not knowing what to do.

Finally we climbed up into Hyde Park, and set off towards David Jones. Because I needed a fruit juice and some scone-type refreshment after all that excitement! The road was lined with more feds, facing outwards towards the park, staring straight ahead. Now I do believe I’ve already intimated that I’m not the sharpest cookie, and I was all for lighting out across the road there and then – after all, there was no traffic! The Man had to gently point out to me that the police were not going to let us across. We’d have to go round. I guess they were afraid we’d start a 2-person riot in the middle of the road! Ahead of us, two old ladies were shouting at the police how disgusting it all was, and what a waste of money.

We walked the gauntlet, the two of us and several other people, and collapsed into David Jones with relief. “So this is how they get people to go to David Jones” said an English tourist ahead of us.

After our refreshment, we tried to leave the way we came, but it turned out they’d locked that door (I’d like to point out that NOTHING was going on in the street outside) so we had to use the side door. The police wouldn’t let us back along Elizabeth Street, so we used a parallel street a couple of blocks down. When we were level with the crossroads where the march had finished, there was an alarming sight – a line of policeman was pushing towards the scattered people. A policeman was standing on a vehicle yelling at people. It was not nice. I felt a thrill of fear and thought the long hoped-for (by the police) riot must have ensued. I later found out from the news that the police had simply decided they were going to use heavy-handed tactics to force people out of Hyde Park – a place they had every right to be – but in the end, they’d given up and people had dissipated naturally.

I went home feeling proud to have been part of that peaceful march. I didn’t know then about the arrests, but let’s face it, in a crowd that size, they were marginal and it was a peaceful demonstration. I was elated, and was sure that we’d all been vindicated and the public would now have to start asking the police some hard questions about their behaviour that day. Imagine my outrage when I listened to the seven and nine news later that afternoon and heard their excited, alarmist reports about attacks! Violence! Arrests! Injuries! Pictures of people with blood running down their faces! Mayhem! I was like, seriously, were these reporters even in the same city as me? I will never trust the media again. Pictures CAN lie in their own way.

SBS and the ABC did, I feel, provide fair coverage of the event. There were some scary pictures of violence and arrests that may or may not have been deserved (and I'm being charitable to the police here). Fair enough, it happened, show the pictures on the news. I don’t expect them to devote 5 minutes of coverage showing people doing nothing but marching, when there were other noteworthy events. But there’s no need to blow everything out of proportion just to boost your ratings. It was PEACEFUL, and the police should be ashamed of themselves for their pathetic macho display. I didn’t know whether to laugh – all this for little me and some girls with flowers painted on their faces? – or cry. I think two German guys said it all (on a video on the internet) when they said something to the effect of “in Europe, we don’t bring out riot police and water cannons unless we attend to use them”. I bet a lot of the police out there on Saturday were fulling hoping to use them.

Roll on the election!

Saturday 8 September 2007

Intrepid Trip to the CBD

Today (Friday) the Man and I decided to take our lives in our hands and venture into the city. The idea was to do our fruit and vegetable shopping, and it was a good opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

What a storm in a teacup this whole security thing is! The city was relatively deserted, and though there was an extra police presence, the atmosphere was not sinister or threatening at all. Police state - hah! Yes, Circular Quay was all closed off with this cage thing - not sure what that was for, is it bullet proof or something? - but apart from that, there was a holiday atmosphere round the city. It was FANTASTIC to have it so empty of people. Tomorrow the Man and I hope to take advantage and do a bit of tourism.

So why all the fuss? As far as I can see, it's come from the media and mainly the chief of policeman, or the police spokesman, whoever he is. You know, the guy who comes on TV talking about the water cannon and stuff. He's made the police look heaps worse than they actually were. If there is a PR course you have to take as part of his job, he obviously failed it. I guess he missed the bit where they told you 'don't openly threaten the public you serve'. He could have said stuff like, there'll be extra security to make sure everyone stays safe, and that they wanted to change the protest route to ensure that protesters stayed safe and nobody was crushed. But evidently he thought it was appropriate to thunder on about how people had better do as they told, get out of Sydney and if we step out of line, we'd better believe we'll be crushed mercilessly with the full weight of police weaponry.

Then you go into the Sydney CBD and realize that security is actually not all that unreasonable.

It makes you wonder if he's trying to make his force look like asses. I marvel at a country where the head of police doesn't get fired for posturing like Mussolini.

At the very least, his department could compensate the city's businesses for lost revenue. It was sad to see the shops so empty (sad for them, great for us!). One young Asian shop assistant timidly told us that it was bad for business, but they were afraid for tomorrow because police told them protesters might cause damage to the shop.

I think the scaremongers should compensate all the businesses. All those people who caused the mass exodus of people from Sydney, and intimidated many businesses out of opening this weekend, are probably enjoying overtime payments this weekend.

It's crazy - I've read comments on the internet from people who think it's a deliciously subversive act to go shopping in Sydney this weekend! What a trick our bastard 'leaders' have played on us!

So...tomorrow to the demo, then back to Paddy's Markets to buy some more superb Australian prawns. Watch here for the update!

Friday 7 September 2007

Got to do something with my life - or do I?

I still don’t know what to do when I grow up!

Every now and then, like now, I get motivated to think about further study so that I can have a career instead of being the monkey with the keys to the stationery cabinet. Then I figure out that a) the job in question would be shit; b) they’d never accept me onto the course; d) the course takes about 100 years and costs $10 million; or d) it’s not offered in Australia.

The Man suggested Environmental Law so I’m looking into that. Hearteningly, there do appear to be opportunities to study law in Sydney, even part time. So what jobs could I get? I don’t want to be an actual solicitor or anything. Leave that to the crusties who are happy working 12 hour days! I’d like to do something incredibly worthy and glamorous, like policy reform or something. I’ll have to look into it.

But who am I kidding? I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a bad idea and I’ll resign myself once again to being the office odd-job woman for the rest of my life.

I’d have saved so much time and money if I’d never bothered with my first degree.

Thursday 6 September 2007

More on APEC!

‘Protesting – even dissenting at all – is increasingly being painted as a bad thing, a dangerous thing, something that’s just going to end in violence, something you deserve to be arrested for.’ I’m quoting Lucy Saunders, from the Sydney University student newspaper, which I read sometimes (it's much better than that MX pile of rubbish). She puts it so well - I don't think I can elaborate on that so I won't.

Tuesday 4 September 2007

Animal Encounters

Yesterday I had the pleasure of eating a tasty hamburger, and a serving of apple and black cherry pie with ice cream, with a blue tongued lizard chasing my food around the table as I ate. I can honestly say that it was a new experience for me. In England you might find yourself tormented by a fly or two while you eat, but never by colourful reptiles.

This was at a roadside café, which is owned by one of the Man’s former colleagues from when he used to work at the tax office. We were on a long Sunday drive down the coast and had forgotten to eat anything, which is why we stopped there. The Man pointed out the lizard to me as we walked in. It was sitting on a table between two children, who were waiting for their parents to order. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if it was even real. It looked a bit like this hideous plastic lizard my brothers and I had when we were growing up. But then, it blinked its beady eyes and started strolling across the table, to my slight amazement. (I say ‘slight’ because I’m getting used to these wildlife moments in Australia.) The children were certainly blasé about it!

When our food arrived, the lizard perked up, and wandered from the children’s table to ours, by way of the window sill. You could tell it really wanted a taste of the Man’s ice cream, and boy could it move. We kept grabbing at the tea tray so that it wouldn’t burn itself on the teapot.

There was another unexpected animal moment when we went round the back to the toilets and glimpsed a fully grown pig wandering about the owner’s backyard. Now, I don’t think I’m being controversial when I say that leaving the tax office was a good move for this man. Let’s just say he seemed fairly eccentric!

I really love these beastly encounters. I didn’t grow up around animals. We didn’t have any pets, though my grandma had an adopted, outdoors cat. There were no animals around in Saudi Arabia, at least not on the compound where we were, though there were crows, which would occasionally attack the smaller children. (And, memorably, one dive bombed me once while I was sitting outside sunbathing). In England, of course, we destroyed nearly all our wildlife years ago. There’s practically nothing left except for birds, which are very un-Australian in their drabness and timidity, and massive, MASSIVE house spiders, which I suppose could count as mammals at a stretch if you classified them based on size and furriness.

Growing up without animals, you don’t think of them except in the theoretical sense. I had lots of stuffed animals, but I didn’t have much of a conception that they were based on actual living creatures, if I ever thought about it all. Besides, my mother told me, “These are much nicer than the real things. Real animals are dirty and smelly.” I never thought to question this. It seemed to make sense. Pretty much everything in life was better in imagination and books than in reality, so why should animals be any different?

The first time I remember really noticing real animals was on my backpacking trip to Thailand when I was 24. I encountered a baby elephant on the streets of Bangkok (I was enchanted, but now I wish I’d kneecapped its owners and set it free), and then in Chiang Mai I went to the zoo. A few months later I moved to Australia to be with the Man, and had my first encounters with kangaroos, koalas and other native animals, and the impossibly big and colourful birds that landed in our backyard to look at us, quizzically, and graciously accept titbits of food (and crap on the laundry). I was amazed to discover that animals are often far cuter in real life than their toy equivalents, with soft, clean fur, and not very smelly at all (obviously I’m excepting koalas).

Ever since I’ve had a kangaroo place its paw on my arm and look up at me with its chocolatey brown eyes, I’ve felt the weight of the responsibility that we humans have towards the environment and animals. I don’t know how anyone can personally experience animals and not care. I don’t know how people can happily destroy what remains of nature and replace it with shopping centres and ugly housing. Animals have such innocence compared with our abominable greed – how can people not feel guilty about what we are doing to them? If we want to have wild animals in our world, we have to protect them all of the time. They won’t just pop into and out of existence as we please.

Thus began the environmentally-aware phase of my life.

But back to the café. The Man told me that this was a piece of the old Australia. I could certainly see that, with the slightly barmy owner, reptile slithering across the tables, friendly family working in the kitchen and the home-style food. But oddly, it also struck me that if you took away the view outside and the lizard, there really was something quintessentially English about the whole set up. I’ve noticed that a lot about Australia, once you get out of Sydney. It’s more English than England sometimes!