(Above: Australians prepare for their lost national weekend by getting on the piss and reading The Punch, Australia's most tabloid on line conversation).
Picking up a lost hard copy newspaper on the train is always a special joy, and shows a decent regard for recycling on the part of the first owner.
That's why I left my 'found' copy of the Daily Terror on the train so someone else might find it. Unless the bloody cleaners in their newly righteous and fearful mood on State Rail got to it first, someone else might have the pleasure of reading a dead tree with Kate Sikora's A smile, wave and a quiet little chat emblazoned on it:
It was short and brief.
A small smile and a wave of the hand. But it was mine.
As Prince William was whisked away from Sydney Airport yesterday, he returned my wave and nodded his head as his car sped off.
Hours later, after standing in the sun for four hours, shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of people at Redfern, another chance to meet the future kind arose as he walked past the heaving crowd to shake hands.
Before I had a chance to think of what I would say if he stopped in front of me, there he was.
All 187 cm of him towering above me with that smile that has been known to melt many hearts.
I had to be quick, but the only question I could think was: "Well, what do you think of the weather?"
His reply: "It's extremely hot."
I have to confess that at that precise moment my heaving chest towering below me broke into a throbbing, pulsating flood of tears. Strangers on the train looked at me as if I was some kind of sociopath, but really it was because finally I'd understood why I usually settled for Mx, the bit of tree killer tripe Chairman Rupert's minions gives out to commuters. Because I prefer it's Tolstoyian grandeur to Sikora.
It turns out that Sikora is the Daily Terror's health reporter, which now explains why health in NSW is in such a parlous condition - I used to think it was the state government - though perhaps she's redeemed by a love of Terry's chocolate orange.
There's more, but let's leave Sikora's colour piece with a couple more grabs:
It wasn't only the weather which caused temperatures to soar with many women in the crowd gushing as he quickly grabbed their hands.
"Oh, he is gorgeous. He is very handsome," Margaret Perrott said.
"I prefer tall, dark and handsome," another woman said.
"He is too white and pasty."
Another fit of sobbing. Decades of feminism and republicanism and it comes to this. How about a knife in the heart of journalism to round out the piece?
In a day when the pomp and ceremony of a royal visit mingled with the bizarre, Premier Kristina Keneally and NSW Governor Marie Bashir wore identical outfits - cream jackets and black skirts - to greet William as he stepped off the plane.
And one TV reporter was so overwhelmed by the Prince's presence that he shouted out William's uncle's name - "Prince Edward" - to attract his attention.
Bizarre? More like Salvador Dali Luis Bunuel surreal.
Intrigued, I tried to google the piece and for the life of me it seems hasn't made it into the 1 and 0 world. So there are still unique scoops happening in the dead tree world and clearly of momentous consequence. Quick, rush out to buy a dead tree, you don't know what you've been missing.
Even more intrigued, I googled Sikora and that's how I discovered her love of toilets, and her contribution to The Punch last September Say no to crazy toilets. I commend the piece to you. It's too fine to ruin with a coarse synopsis, and you'll leave it wondering why you continue to waste five minutes of your life - five minutes you'll never get back - reading can labels.
Meanwhile, back in the real world of The Punch's current interminable conversation, we now have James Morrow talking about a piece by David Penberthy, such that incest seems to be the new rule.
We can't spend our national day bemoaning our history, says Morrow, with all the sensitivity of Brevet Major General of volunteers George Armstrong Custer telling the Indians they've got the casinos, so shut up already about the past.
Morrow, who excuses his elegant discourse by claiming he comes from the United States, wants to prove that he's gone native, so he opens up his riposte with some stylish wit:
Oh yes, bogans rule, and how better to show how it's done than a bogan American:
As if there’s anything wrong with that.
Oi, can someone dissect the man and report on the state of his kidneys and liver.
The fact is that no free country spends its national day navel gazing. Instead, they hook on to some element of their individual creation story and use it as an excuse for a piss-up.
Freedom is freedom to get on the piss and have a piss-up and tell others that they're full of shit? Oh he sounds the essence of an Australian, a genuine currency lad. And the good news is that means Australia is just like the United States:
In the weeks before the Fourth of July, you will not find Americans hunkered down over laptops, endlessly commenting on the websites of broadsheet newspapers, picking over the lowlights of their history from slavery to Vietnam.
Instead, the papers will be filled with tips on how to prepare the perfect potato salad (hint: think sour cream. And lots of dill.)
Lots of dill? Surely Morrow provides that in plenty. And what else?
When the day finally comes it is spent much like an Australia Day, with friends, family, food and fireworks - and plenty of cold beer.
Dearie me, Ray Milland come on down, your Lost Weekend is waiting for you in the antipodes. Now how about a little cultural stereotyping?
Likewise the French are happy to spend Bastille Day waving the tricolour while smoking unfiltered Gauloises and languidly speculating on their existential ennui. (OK, I made the last bit up because I have never enjoyed a Bastille Day in France.)
Would it have hurt him to google up a bit of an insight? Bastille Day maybe isn't what it once was, but it still remains quintessentially French, but then the French have a certain style beer swillers seem to lack.
But it is a damn sure bet that however they celebrate, they don’t use the day to focus on the Jacobin terror into which their revolution quickly descended, or bemoan their forebears uniquely brutal colonial history around the world. Which is why there is nothing wrong with Australians enjoying Australia Day as they do.
Oh well, let's invoke the spirit of Henri Martin, back in 1880 when the French were talking about celebrating their past:
In the debate leading up to the adoption of the holiday, Henri Martin, chairman of the French Senate, addressed that chamber 29 June 1880. "Do not forget that behind this 14 July, where victory of the new era over the ancien régime was bought by fighting, do not forget that after the day of 14 July 1789, there was the day of 14 July 1790. … This [latter] day cannot be blamed for having shed a drop of blood, for having divided the country. It was the consecration of unity of France. … If some of you might have scruples against the first 14 July, they certainly hold none against the second. Whatever difference which might part us, something hovers over them, it is the great images of national unity, which we all desire, for which we would all stand, willing to die if necessary."
Silly brooding Frenchie.
But back to the inimitable Morrow, and his harping about the Indians, sorry the Aborigines, without once mentioning their name:
Not because our past is perfect - it is not. But rather because it is imperfect, we need a break from the running battle between the shock troops of bogan jingoism with their southern cross tattoos on the one hand and the black-armband intellectuals who could give Jewish mothers a lesson or two in guilt on the other.
Oh yes, there's not much time for Henri Martin brooding in Morrow's world:
Which is the problem with calling Australia Day rubbish: it is a surrender. A surrender to those who confuse nationalism with patriotism, and a surrender to those on the other side for whom Australian history and culture is all dark underbelly.
Which is the problem with calling Australia Day rubbish: it is a surrender. A surrender to those who confuse nationalism with patriotism, and a surrender to those on the other side for whom Australian history and culture is all dark underbelly.
But what about the dumb fucks who confuse debate and argument with a kind of tweedledum and tweedledee, ying and yang, black and white view of the world, as if holding two opposing ends of the one bit of rope was about as far as their Pooh bear brain can take them?
We have 364 other days every year to work through these issues, and as a relatively young nation, it is no wonder that we are still finding a happy medium. This debate is crucial, and I look forward to a day when every day in Australia, not just Australia Day, is suffused by the quiet hum of understanding of what Bob Carr called “the brutality, the heroism, the tenderness, the patience, the humility as well as the pride” that has made our nation what it is today in all its imperfect greatness.
Until then, come 26 January, make mine a Cooper’s, thanks.
Yep, quoting Bob Carr makes him an intellectual, and drinking Coopers confirms he's a South Australian intellectual wanker. And typically because thinking is too hard for Pooh, it's on with the piss-up.
My god is there any wonder Australia Day is the best day of all to Wake in Fright?
Please, make mine a nice New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, plenty of fruit, with tropical and passionfruit flavours, and then I think I'll move on to a nice French red, perhaps a Beaujolais given the weather, but something with a little more grunt than a beajuolais noveau. Oh and some favre beans. And perhaps Mr. Morrow's kidneys if they're not too worn.
And then I can spend Australia Day getting pissed and brooding about the Daily Terror, and loons like Morrow, specially shipped in from America when we have more than enough loons already squawking on loon pond.
Meanwhile, gentle reader, if we happen to meet on a train, perhaps we can establish a kind of code, one that will thrill the heart and might even lead to a passionate love affair between tremulous strangers.
How about "What do you think of the weather?" to which you may reply "It's extremely hot", and we won't once mention climate change, because it upsets Tim Blair so, and we wouldn't want to brood on the dark underbelly of Australia, but instead embark on a passionate, hot, sweaty exchange of fluids.
See? Definitively mad, and the level of writing in Chairman Rupert's rags clearly to blame ...
(below: en français s’il vous plaît. Le poison that is the lost weekend of Australia Day).
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