Christmas, or How I learned to stop wishing a violent death on reindeer

One more sleep till D-Day… but this year, I’ve actually felt good about Christmas. It’s not a familiar feeling. In my adult life, Christmas tradition has involved ambivalence tending to hostility, a fortnight of creeping despair, then curling up after a bottle of cognac to cry in a corner and throw up mince on the rug. Many of those years, if the bloke in the red suit had existed, I would have left him out a roast leg of venison and hoped that the reindeer could smell it on his clothes. No doubt many of us go through stages like this, where we want to go out and club a ringy-dingy elf right in the head.

And no wonder. The season can’t compete with how it was as a kid, when days were as long as novels and “Ten more minutes” was a judicial sentence. The heat somehow arrived earlier. The lead-up to Christmas stretched out to the horizon, as afternoons led a charge deep into the evenings and the grass dried to gold. Stepping outside to air already hot before we’d dressed for school. The toy shops excruciating in their possibility. The advent calendar crawling by, glue and crappy chocolate marking days that dragged out their final demise like a row of dying grandparents. We packed three summers in before the holidays even began, then those final few pre-Christmas days, the wonder of a sky still light at 8pm, peeking through the leaves behind the little church at Research, the chirping of insects mixing with the sound of carols and the smell of evening air.

But with adolescence, the scale of time compacted like osteoporotic spines on a Bolivian bus ride. December came too soon each year, this unwelcome guest that muscled its way in, a bunch of K-Mart catalogues telling us how we should feel. The migraine stink of high-gloss paper and the shriek of Harvey Fucking Norman drill sergeants hounding us down our hallways into discount whitegood dreams.

Perhaps it was spending those early days in stifling primary-school portables that had conjured the feel of endless summer. But with our internal hormone supernovae boiling through our skins, we faced the world with simmering resentment. While still too close to childhood, and too disgusted by children, to allow nostalgia to flourish, we recognised the shift. Like most of life before the hormones hit, Christmas had been easy, and now it was not. Whatever it was, it was dead to us.

That view persisted. So with adulthood, and the options that it made available, I slowly withdrew from Christmas, an ever-more-peripheral participant. The year I dealt roulette at Melbourne’s casino was the death knell, and not just from being rostered on Christmas Day. While previous employees will no doubt remember fondly Kerry’s staff hampers (probably since axed by James), I remember the cas floor playing a 50-minute loop of Christmas songs on repeat from November through to February. Ten times a shift, five shifts a week…

Nor are we talking some classy Stille Nacht chorale here, but the most gut-churning discharge of kitsch to be excreted, hot and thick and yellow, from the pus-gland of the season – think ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ sung by seasons-old reality TV contestants, or some Bing Crosby fake doing Busty the Snowman (ten percent of the lyrics changed to avoid royalties), all sung in that breathy, idiot-grinning voice that fuckwits use to speak to children. As corny as an Aztec turd in a tortilla, and about as appealing.

On Christmas Eve, with a packed table in front of me and the dull drumbeat of murder behind my eyes, I spun a floater – one of those anomalies of physics where the ball hangs on the divider between two numbers for several minutes and refuses to drop. The only recourse is to wait. ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ filled the interim, caressing our ears like a gang of chainsaws fighting in fast-forward.

When the ball finally fell, away from the number that an agonised gentleman’s pulsing forehead veins had been urging, all I could say was a cheery “Looks like the Baby Jesus doesn’t love you!” as I swiped the table clean. My humanity had crawled back within some dim recess to die, and dragged the twitching corpse of Christmas with it.

From then on, Christmas saw me travelling, working, only using it as a means to examine other places. Years ticked by but that ambivalence remained undimmed. Then last December, recently returned from a long trip away, I led a house party in a 3am chorus of ‘Jerusalem’. After the neighbours yelled at us, my friend Em suggested I should come to carols that week.

“Arrright, sure…” I said, extricating myself from a fence.

“No, you’re just drunk,” she said. “As if you’ll do it.”

She was right about the first part. But as with many, alcohol in my system will see even the most innocuous challenge met with bloody-minded resolve. “Oh really? Is that right? As if. I’ll totally do it. I’ll go the day before. I’ll see allll the carols before you even get there. Whatever. I don’t care. Hey, chips.”

Drunken honour being what it is, I went. Em’s old school choir sang in the sweeping vault of St Paul’s. Those songs started creaking themselves out of the dusky corners of memory. Once in Royal David’s City, stood a… whosy-whatsit… yeah…

And all of a sudden it just felt right. I mean, I’m no fan of any religious doctrine, never sure why long-dead cultures should define our moral code. Something doesn’t quite gel about taking our cues on sexual conduct from people who thought that impregnating twelve-year-olds was a pretty sweet way to pass your day. But the more harmless traditions can be comforting, and there is much to admire in the Church’s art. In the strains of those songs and the glow of candles, the clock wound back. A certain stiffness of the heart fell away. Something felt like Christmas, and I left smiling.

I spent the next two weeks in my family home. The service had tagged a starting point, and now there was a prelude, not just December tripping over itself into a pile of tinsel. In the days leading up, I sat in the house where I was raised, the doors open on their screens, my father playing the piano, my mother mixing Christmas cakes dense as antimatter on the broad kitchen bench.

All those twinges from childhood came back. The memory of heat. Up late at night, when that alone had an illicit thrill. Coming down the stairs in short pyjamas, a tree all pulsing colour and gold. The residual happiness from singing, latent food aromas behind the sharpness of fresh pine.  A sense of ease, like everything and everyone was sitting back, the way Dad and I would sit together late when it was too hot to sleep, an hour or more without a word. The insects talked for us and the leaves were still and the night air gave warmth and sustenance like amniotic fluid. That and the quiet and the lights dimmed to burnt orange made it feel like we were floating in amber.

Yesterday, collecting a sack of dead poultry from my parents’ butcher, I drove past my old primary school, yawning vacant with holidays. On a whim I stopped and wandered in, for the first time in uncounted years. Between worrying that I would be picked up by the cops as the world’s tardiest kiddy-fiddler (come on man, iCal that shit), I was struck by those things I’ve read to cliché but hadn’t yet experienced. How the whole place seemed to have been miniaturised, its most epic expanses shrunk to a few dozen steps. How strange and yet familiar it was – around the new buildings and refigurations were the old roofs I’d climbed, old railings I’d sat on, the path to my Grade 5 classroom leading to a portable that was no longer there. Concrete trailing off into long grass like a half-finished sentence.

Across the road, the church whose yard had once meant Christmas had now been turned into a childcare centre, the old shortcut to the shops fenced off, the short sharp hill where I broke my leg landscaped to a child-friendly gradient. But the sense of it remained. Our early lives can be that close, if only we reach out for them. Poignant moment of reflection aside, I got home to learn that Dad had managed to trip over the dog and fall into the pool with the whipper-snipper.

This Christmas, I count my blessings. Despite their efforts, my parents and my sisters are alive and well. One sister is far from us in Canada, but she is safe and she is whole. This is not the case for so many families, who live with painful gaps around their table.

And this year, Christmas feels right. December’s skies are gold and salmon-pink, the evenings lie open in their mildness. Tonight I will meet my friend for carols again, and sing those songs that won’t seem so unfamiliar. Afterwards, late, I’ll sit in my family kitchen, hulling stone fruit, listening to the piano. Then sitting, still, lights dimmed to amber. And tomorrow my family will wake in a leisurely fashion, no small people driving us to early-morning ritual. We’ll cook, and eat, and make each other cry with laughter, and choose not to wonder how many more repeats of this we’ll be allowed. The season has its stories. Through them all is that little stomach-twist of anticipation, an echo of what I felt as a child. I can feel it stirring.

And so this is Christmas. And what have we done? We’ve done this. Not the way that junk-mail brochures told us it should be, but this, our own thing, that we have made. My lifetime’s worth of stories, and the gratitude that the collection may be added to. However long it took, I’m glad I found my way back to them in the end.

 

 

 

 

First published on The Punch.

Talking on the internet

Morning all. If you want to chat to me on the internet today, I’ll be live-blogging the first Test against New Zealand, over at The Roar.

The link is below, all comments and conversations welcome.

http://www.theroar.com.au/2011/12/01/test-cricket-australia-vs-new-zealand-live-scores-blog-day-one/

The life and death of Peter Roebuck: a good man, a bad man, or something in between

I was late to hear about Peter Roebuck’s death. Camping in a state forest near Narrandera, with New South Welsh clocks showing the early hours of Sunday, it was just one part of an outside world kept at bay. Come Monday evening, the news as fresh a shock as in any earlier iteration, I found myself tracing the story’s evolution back to its beginning.

The process has been desperately sad. As a fellow writer of sport, I held Roebuck above most others. As someone for whom cricket is about emotional resonance more than entertainment, Roebuck’s voice was part of my life, the soundscape of summer nostalgia as much as highway air past the car window or the shriek of seagulls.

At the same time, while bleakly, it has been instructive and fascinating to see how the various strands of media handle a case so complex and ambiguous. Roebuck has died leaving more question marks than the most enthusiastic YouTube commenter, and given the closed nature of South African policing, straight answers may never be forthcoming.

Reports through Sunday were brief, bare, and often wrong. Found dead in a hotel room. Fallen from a window. Police had spoken to him earlier that day. Were with him at the time. Visions of foul play circled thick and dark as evening bats.

On Monday came the obituaries. “Tragedy far greater than 47 all out has struck cricket, and this should be a Roebuck column. But it isn’t one, and can’t be one, and never will be one again, because the tragedy is Peter Roebuck. He is dead.” So wrote Greg Baum, in a front-page piece choked with emotion. Details were still hazy, but the final sentence of Baum’s quote was deemed the important part. Responses flowed accordingly – Neil Manthorpe, Vic Marks, Tim Lane all paid their respects.

As early as Monday night though, online reports were emerging, passed on in Tuesday’s papers. That Roebuck had been accused of sexual assault, that the visiting police were of the relevant ilk. That investigations were underway.

The eulogies, of course, have been heartfelt, mostly from colleagues and friends. In general coverage, though, the overwhelming sensation has been uneasiness, a media shifting awkwardly on its chair. As yet, they still don’t have a fix on this story. They want Roebuck to be A Good Man or A Bad Man. The prospect that someone might be both is too much to bear.

The stakes, given the conservative presentation of news, are high. No outlet wants to say nice things about someone who turns out to be Bad, or ill about someone Good. Early reports had more hedges than ever shared an advertising hoarding with Benson.

But ultimately, the lure of the lurid is strong. While Fairfax papers have stood by their man, others here and overseas have been sketching an unpleasant narrative, though one built sufficiently on insinuation and clever positioning that it can be backed away from at short notice.

Essentially, it is the suggestion of Roebuck as a long-term sexual exploiter of boys.

The main thing mentioned in each suggestive news piece, and embraced by vicious blogs as vindication, is the current accusation of assault. Apparently a reminder is due that allegations do not equal guilt, and that sexual impropriety is both the easiest charge to make and the hardest to dispel. Just ask Anwar Ibrahim.

The accusation itself has been given little study. Various reports have it as an ‘attempted sexual assault’, a hazy concept if ever there were one. Attempting a nightclub kiss could be classed as such if the recipient were not amenable.

It is in keeping with the implied narrative that every report refers to the complainant specifically as a “young man”. The man was 26, not the youth implied. To suggest he lacked the capacity to deflect an advance is specious.

Then there’s the possibility of a set-up, which no report I’ve read has yet considered. There are two potential motivations. Sexual accusations are frequently used in blackmail, especially in poorer countries. A high-profile foreigner with a seemingly large supply of philanthropic dollars, Roebuck would have been an obvious target.

Or something bigger? Roebuck was the single most outspoken critic of Zimbabwean politics in the cricketing world. He knew a lot about the country, and castigated ZanuPF politicians and Zimbabwe Cricket Board officials specifically and by name. Much of the diplomatic pressure on Zimbabwe comes from cricketing nations like Australia and Britain, who are more often than others minded of its existence. Roebuck was a wicked acacia thorn in Mugabe’s side.

Trading on one infamous incident in Roebuck’s past, a sexual allegation would be a most effective means of discredit. That a Zimbabwean national should make the accusation within days of Roebuck’s arrival in Africa, after seeking him out online and arranging a hotel meeting, is worthy of note and investigation. Strange that no allegations were ever made in the many years Roebuck spent in Australia.

After the assault allegations, most reports have also touched on Roebuck’s charity house in Pietermaritzburg. Again, the emphasis is on age, citing “young men” and often “boys”. The “boys” in question are mostly in their mid-20s and going through university. The coaching of language gives a different impression.

Look, says the implication. Here is a young African man accusing Roebuck of assault. Here are other young African men under his care and control. Some of the internet’s fouler repositories have taken this to its furthest conclusion, painting Roebuck as a colonialist pervert creating stockpiles of the vulnerable to satisfy his rampant demand for flesh. They have even read sexual malice into some of his sponsored orphans calling him ‘Dad.’

The suggestions are beyond obscene. Roebuck’s students past and present have greeted his death with shock and grief, and described him in glowing terms, as a generous man and a genuine father figure. Not one has suggested any impropriety on his part. Not one has been asked how they feel about his life’s best work being twisted into de facto evidence against him.

All this nudging, rustling, and whispering is essentially based on the one incident. In 1999, we’ve been told countless times in the last few days, Roebuck caned three white South African cricketers. This was well before his charity work started, when he was taking on aspiring players in England for a training regime.

The cricketers are always described as “boys”, despite being 19, and perfectly old enough to have told him to go and jump if they had chosen. The only one contacted by the media this week said he bore Roebuck no ill will, and described him as “a brilliant mind”.

Yes, it’s an odd one, but the level of assumption is unsupportable. Every report has implied a sexual aspect to the caning, when Roebuck belonged to a generation that was routinely caned at school. Much has been made of the judge’s line about it being “done to satisfy some need in you”, without quoting the subsequent sentence in which he refers to establishing a position of power, not to getting one’s rocks off.

This doesn’t mean I’m here to make the case for caning. But presumptions about things that don’t involve you are easy to get wrong. The most prosaic intent can become sinister in the telling. In 2003, I was spotted breaking into a Carlton apartment and leaving with a bag of women’s underwear. As it happened, my girlfriend’s faulty front door latch sometimes needed to be popped with a credit card, and it was my turn to make the run to the laundromat. Cuff me.

Whatever happened in Roebuck’s case, the caning trial was an utter humiliation, and probably the lowest point of his life. He went to ground afterwards, and thought about staying down. Whether he did or didn’t have a case to answer in South Africa, it seems likely that his memory of that first case led to his fatal despair in contemplating fighting another.

It is a sad end. Alive, Roebuck could perhaps have cleared his name. Now, the investigation will likely trail off. Conjecture will continue. The nation’s news services will maintain their vacillation between respecting the revered writer and sniping at the potential villain. We probably won’t get an answer. Roebuck will neither become a comfortably Good Man nor an entirely Bad one. Like the hypocritical mass of the rest of us, he’ll fall somewhere in between.

First published on Crikey.

Tie the Kangaroo down, Joyce

Jesus motherloving Christ. If Alan Joyce is making a late bid for Twat of the Year 2011, then he’s eating daylight on his competitors. On Saturday the Qantas CEO shut down worldwide operations of one of the planet’s biggest airlines, in an over-reaction that made King Lear look pretty chill.

Like one of those seasoned chooks you get all ready for roasting, some things come pre-satirised. On Friday, Joyce asked shareholders at Qantas’ annual general meeting to give him a pay rise of 71 percent, from under $3 million a year to about $5 million. They did. The next day, he shut down their company entirely, because of the “extreme demands” of workers. First prize, Alan. Believe.

Where unions have to give 72 hours notice of any action, Joyce gave zero hours. He stranded 68,000 people worldwide, upended the plans of tens of thousands more, and lost an unquantifiable number of future bookings.

And why? To force an advantage in an industrial dispute that was nowhere near crisis point. To stand on a milk crate in a pissing contest. And he got just the elevation he was after. An emergency sitting of the Fair Work Australia tribunal handed down its orders at about 2.30 this morning, terminating all Qantas industrial action – both the grounding and any strikes by unions. This was just what Qantas counsel had campaigned for from minute one of the hearing.

Planes could be up as early as this afternoon. But the scope of cancellations to date has already seen foreign leaders miss connections home from CHOGM. It will leave a huge dent in the Spring Racing Carnival, one of Victoria’s biggest weeks for tourism. 300 remote area doctors were stuck in Alice Springs with no way to reach their patients. And it happened to be smack bang in the middle of what is for many people a five-day weekend.

From all appearances, Joyce timed it to cause as much damage and disruption as possible. He gave no warning deliberately. He knew the chaos his airline could cause, and how much pressure it would place on the government. “Qantas apologise for any inconvenience caused” should be met with a hiss. The amount of inconvenience caused has been carefully maximised.

Imagine for a second that unions had shut down the airline without a minute’s forewarning. There would be calls for them to be criminally liable. For them to be disbanded. The Opposition would be tearing into the government tooth and claw.

Joyce wants to blame unions regardless, but it won’t save his reputation, nor that of Qantas. In his media blitz yesterday, as repercussions manifested in the form of stressed, worn, and teary passengers, Joyce was standing among the wreckage of the company he’s supposed to run, congratulating himself on his “bold decision”. Here was a man who wanted to get rid of the possums in his roof, so called in a napalm strike.

The reek of ego, rutting in the streets and smearing its musk on mailboxes, is the inescapable odour wafting through Melbourne’s streets in these quiet hours before dawn. From his comments on Sunday, Joyce was tired of negotiating. Manufacturing a crisis gave him a chance to skip it. He clearly believes the FWA intervention will get his preferred result.

Qantas and the three unions in question now have three weeks to reach agreement before having one imposed on them by FWA. But with Joyce’s muscle-flex having demonstrated just how firmly he can twist the national arm behind its back, the odds for something favouring Qantas management look good.

But the most offensive thing isn’t disruption. These things happen, sometimes for the best of reasons. For mine, the offensive thing is Joyce’s level of spin. Yes, a part of Spring Carnival is the unmistakable tang of horseshit in the air. It’s just not usually contingent on a Qantas CEO opening his mouth.

For starters, Joyce lumps all three unions together: those of the engineers (ALAEA), the baggage handlers (TWU), and the long-haul pilots (AIPA). He tries to claim they have forced this decision, with rolling strikes in recent months costing $68 million, and an unsustainable wage demand.

Yet the pilots’ association has made no pay claim, nor taken any strike action. Their campaign, completely separate to those of the other unions, is about insisting that Qantas-trained pilots are used to fly Qantas-branded planes, rather than using cheaper offshore replacements.

In AIPA’s first industrial action in 44 years, the extent of the campaign has been to wear red ties bearing a slogan, and to mention the campaign in their pre-flight announcements. They haven’t delayed a single flight to date.

As for the rest of the strike, the TWU has recorded just six hours of industrial action in the past eight months. And according to the Daily Telegraph, a full month of industrial action by engineers in September still saw Qantas cancel fewer flights than the unaffected Jetstar.

I interviewed a Qantas domestic pilot on Saturday evening, who unsurprisingly asked not to be named. He claims limited industrial action can even suit management. “It gives the airline a chance to cancel whichever flights they want. Airlines cancel flights all the time for various reasons, like if a flight’s not full enough. It gives them a nice excuse to hand out to the public.”

No wonder everyone was blindsided. Action was still relatively minor. Qantas had not even suggested government mediation, the logical step when negotiations aren’t going well. It appears that Joyce decided it was beneath him to participate.

And where his magical $68 million loss comes from is as mysterious as Joyce’s other accounting. According to Joyce yesterday, his pay rise wasn’t really a pay rise. According to Joyce a few months back, 1000 Qantas jobs would be lost offshore. According to Joyce this weekend, that number was zero. As my pilot interviewee said, “He’s a mathematician, but he hasn’t done anything to show that he has the qualifications.”

Of course, it’s the offshore threat that is the sticking point in negotiations, with unions wanting some guarantee this won’t happen. Joyce’s plans are for exactly that to happen.

You can see the model with Qantas’ New Zealand routes: planes with Qantas flight numbers, Qantas paintwork, and Qantas uniforms, but staffed entirely by New Zealanders employed by a Qantas front called Jetconnect. The difference? Staff cost 40 percent less, receiving NZ dollars on an NZ pay scale.

You can extrapolate, then, what Joyce’s plans for a large Qantas subsidiary based in Asia would mean. If you think the exchange rate is good in Auckland, try Kuala Lumpur. Try Bangkok. Jetstar, which Joyce used to run, is already using Thai crew, who cost a couple of hundred bucks a month. An Australian would earn that in a day.

No wonder they quietly withdrew that John Travolta safety video. “There’s no-one I’d rather have at the controls than a Qantas pilot,” said the man who played Vincent Vega. Union scum.

In grounding the fleet with no warning, Joyce and his board showed utter disregard for their employees, their shareholders, and their public. Even a couple of days’ notice would have ameliorated the consequences.

Truly remarkable, isn’t it, that it didn’t occur to Joyce to mention the prospect at the AGM. As the Financial Review’s Marcus Priest wrote, “There will be some interesting questions of corporate disclosure and directors’ duties to be explored in any subsequent legal proceedings.”

But this is where his other great dance begins: regarding premeditation. Joyce claims that he and the board only decided on the lockout scheme on Saturday morning. It was in effect by 5 pm. Mate, it takes me longer than that to organise knock-off drinks.

Pilot union vice-president Richard Woodward says Qantas were booking thousands of hotel rooms days or even weeks ago to accommodate stranded passengers. At Saturday night’s initial FWA hearing, counsel for the APIA and the TWU requested documents which showed the pre-existence of plans. Qantas, surprisingly, opposed the move. Nothing to hide…

Counsel for Qantas Frank Parry also complained that in potentially being ordered to continue negotiations, “Qantas has been dragged in here at short notice and been presented with an untenable alternative”.

Barman, I’ll have a Bullshitski. You want short notice, talk to the people whose planes were recalled as they were taxiing to the runway. Ask the woman rushing to see her father before he died. The only party with any notice was Qantas – as much notice as they liked, since it was up to them to pick the date.

The denials, in the end, are impossibly juvenile. We’ve got a kid arm-deep in the cookie jar while querying the existence of baked goods. This is the way of Joyce’s regime. Just listen to his Inside Business interview with Alan Kohler – every single answer starts with a refutation. Everything is justified. Poor brave Alan made the difficult decision. That’s why they pay him the big bucks. And if you want a culprit, those bloody unions are to blame.

Of course, those of a certain view will always find a way to blame unions. The unions faked the moon landings. The unions gave me herpes. Union dingoes took my baby. The unions are the reason why my kids hate me and my wife never quite looks me in the eye anymore.

It’s all their fault. Oh, and sorry, for punching you in the face repeatedly, but I couldn’t solve the crossword this morning, so, take it up with The Times.

Even the great Americain, dropping a few horse-apples as he heads out to early trackwork this morning, can’t match the size of these Joycean steamers. A company which has not even asked for arbitration can’t suddenly claim last resort. A guy who initiates crisis can’t deflect responsibility.

“They are trashing our strategy and our brand. They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas, their members… and the travelling public.” Said the man who shut down the airline. Said the man who fisted every customer for his own tactical advantage. Said the man who made headlines in papers round the world for the worst possible reason.

See? The bloke must have a beef with workers. He’s trying to put satirists out of a job as well.

 

 

 

This piece was originally published on The Punch.

Too many names

When he first came back from Afghanistan, in one of those whiskey-hazed nights whose memory seems to be viewed through the glass of a window louvre, my friend The Soldier led a late-night toast. He’s a fan of late-night toasts. I think it was just me and him that night, not one of those rabble-rousing, we-happy-few circles. One of his officers had lost an arm in front of him, to a roadside bomb. The Soldier had had a few close shaves of his own. He led a toast to every Australian who’d died there, said them all by name.

It was the fairly early days. There’d been a dozen, maybe less. It wasn’t something he had to think about. The forces felt each one personally.

Yesterday, we lost three more. And no-one is asking who will name the Afghans, a decade’s worth this year. Even the number of digits in their toll is blurring into nothing. Their names are powdered rock. An Afghan interpreter died yesterday. We heard about him afterwards, an addendum. Harvard style or MLA. Just be consistent.

I never know what to say to this war, to our involvement. You get the positives. The ground support for the engineers putting in infrastructure, building the schools and building the bridges. Things that will help people live lives. The stories from The Soldier – no starry-eyed nationalist – about looking into the faces of people you had helped or saved. The growing of goodwill. And then the others, the pissing of goodwill away. The ‘incidents’, the ‘unfortunate events’, the collateral, the thousands of dead who certainly didn’t make themselves that way. And would there be more or less of them if the foreigners weren’t there? And would the lives of those there are be better, or degrade?

In one way, it feels kneejerk to support it. Cheap patriotism, cocking your ears to the sound of jingo bells. The missionary conviction that we’re the enlightened ones who show the way. In another, the opponents are kneejerk too. Self-righteous lines about situations they won’t ever understand, safe indignation, having opinions about warzones when the most dangerous thing they’ve ever handled is a garlic crusher. The ones who say it’s not to do with us don’t understand what happens to the ground where people die. Blood colours a connection that can’t be scuffed away.

And on it goes, no answer. Bad results and good intentions. Good results and repercussions. Little victories, grieving brothers. Breathing harder, bleeding hearts and beads of moisture. Beer and water. Scores of things don’t go to order. Out on orders, scouting, ration packs and stats and sleep disorders. Boys who fought in Afghan deserts, local peasants rise and fade, and join up with that number that nobody here could tell you, that no-one’s ever heard. And three more Australians die, and add them to the list: the other list whose paint is clear. And now we mark them off. I can’t recall the tally now, how many have we got? They had their tour: thirty nights of boredom for each hour of rising flame. By this point, even The Soldier would struggle to memorise their names.

 

 

 

 

Her Majesty the Queen versus Steve Irwin

The Queen has just left my home town, and my veins are singing with royal joy.

My copy of What Crown Jewel Is That? remains on the passenger seat. My monarch-watching trousers are still hung over the balustrade. I can’t quite bring myself to wash them yet, retaining as they do the faint odour of a divine mandate to rule.

And they may yet get another run – I’ve heard a rumour that she might be back for Cup Day. I’ve heard a rumour that she’s part-gecko. I’ve heard a rumour that she might be riding Americain. I’m looking forward to having a fiver on her.

Sometimes, in writing articles, I say things like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if cops didn’t punch people in the head for standing in the street?” And then other people say “WHY DON’T YOU JUST HAND OUR COUNTRY OVER TO STALIN AND BOB BROWN YOU ANARCHO-CHAMPION OF THE LEFT.”

I don’t like being called left-wing, basically because most people who call themselves left-wing are wicked annoying. As are most who call themselves right-wing. Unless they are birds discussing methods of penmanship. (Penbirdship? No, that’s the editor of The Punch.)

So if you thought I wanted to tear down all of our traditional societal structures and replace them with IVF clinics for Afghan whales, I’m going to have to disappoint. See, I quite like the Queen. In fact I’m all for her.

The last few days, we’ve been harvesting frames from the beehive at my house. It’s had me thinking. In many ways, Queen Elizabeth II is like the queen bees in our hives. I mean, she lays up to 2,000 eggs a day. A grille called a ‘queen excluder’ keeps her from the harvestable combs. When a rival queen emerges she will lead a swarm of followers to start a new hive in our next-door-neighbour’s plum tree.

And yet republicans in Australia don’t like her. They’re a weird bunch. They come out once in a while and try to get everyone stirred up, and fail, and leave in a cloud of disgruntled muttering. Imagine that at your next house party, half a dozen people suddenly proposed that you all join a passionate campaign to bring back Young Talent Time, hosted by some Australian Idol wash-up.

Well, sure, you say. You… could do that. It could even be achieved. But why the hell would you bother?

Australian republicans don’t realise that they are purely ornamental. Like rubber vine leaves in your water feature (why not just have a real vine?). Like pointless zips on pretend pockets in your stupid jeans (why not just have real pockets?). Like Australian republicanism (why not have a real issue?).

Royal visits are the times when journalists are most likely to try and source republicans for comment, but it’s also exactly the time when most of those republicans get awfully shy and polite about it.

“Um,” they say, “well, just me personally, I think perhaps it’s time we moved on, politically…and…”

And why are they so shy and polite? Because the Queen is around and they don’t want to upset her. Because by their very nature they can’t help showing deference. It’s almost like she was born to reign over you or something, you snivelling serfs. Now harvest some grain.

You would think that this monarchist view would enrage the leftoid pinko bilby-chakra audience, even though they probably won’t notice because they’re busy Occupying everything from Green’s Head to Deniliquin Bakery.

But even they, friends. Even they. When Her Madge came to Melbourne, the Occupy movement welcomed her, and declined to protest. The Queen, they said, she goes alright. She’s a nice old bird. Don’t be rude. Somebody tuck those bloody shirts in.

The logical snag I’ve always hit with the republican campaign (though calling it a campaign is like throwing wet Scotch Fingers at a wall and calling it an artillery barrage) is that there is actually no good reason for seeing it through.

Why have a republic, we ask? And the answer is always an Arnott’s Assorted of generalisations and aphorisms. Own two feet, they say. Tied to apron strings. Young nation. Forging own identity. At the end of the day. Takes one to know one. Seven brides for seven brothers.

Then there’s some emotive rhetoric about moving on and grasping our future and evolution, as though the British monarchy is totally holding us back from our dreams, and making us stay home on Saturday nights, and saying we have to wear a bike helmet even though it totally messes up our hair and Jason Franks isn’t going to think we’re hot.

In fact the British monarchy couldn’t be doing a better job of leaving us alone, and has no real power over Australia in any case.

Getting rid of it would just be a hassle. We’d have to change the money and the stamps and the flag and the national anthem. (On second thought, please change the national anthem. The Wiggles. Khe Sanh. Anything.) There’d be interminable bitch-fights about every replacement. They’d throw it open to public voting. The new flag would be a picture of Alan Jones giving a thumbs-up while rooting a Four N Twenty pie.

And those are just the bare practicalities. See, unlike the republican arguments, the arguments against a republic are specific and real.

Like this one. If you don’t have a Queen, you don’t have a prime minister. If you don’t have a prime minister, you have to have a president. And if you have a president, do you know what you’re going to get?

Jeff Kennett. Or Eddie McGuire. Or Steve Irwin. I know he’s dead, but it’s our country now. Keep your rules, England, we’ll do whatever we want!

You’re going to get whoever is the cockiest and most ruthless bastard in the climb to the top, because then there’d be a chance they actually get to be the boss.

A constitutional monarchy is an excellent system of government. You have the Prime Minister and the Parliament who hold the power to propose and enact legislation, and to make executive decisions. Above them, you have the symbolic power of the monarch.

The monarch holds no actual executive power. Yet the government is appointed by and responsible to the monarch. There is a crucial psychological barrier there. Even the prime minister is still only the most senior servant of the Queen.

Presidents, on the other hand, have no-one above them. Where prime ministers can never quite treat the country as their personal possession, presidents can. Ironically, it’s the presence of the monarch that stops Australia being treated like a kingdom.

There’s just no reason to get rid of the Queen. She’s not hurting anyone. To the contrary, Queens are awesome. And old. You already know what we do with old things. We restore them. We maintain them.

There’s always a period of historical contempt for whichever era currently sits at medium distance. When buildings are 50 years old, everyone hurries to knock down. When they near 100, we have community protests to protect them, and wear out the word ‘quaint’.

The monarchy is a historical building. It must be kept, and it must be maintained, because it’s fascinating. It’s inextricably part of our history, and of world history. The institution costs some money to maintain, sure, but far less than the value it creates. How many people visit Buckingham Palace? How much cash flowed from the crowd at Fed Square? How many Wills-and-Kate commemorative colonoscopy pipes were sold?

Just as sometimes, at Christmas, even people who don’t buy into the whole God-made-me-pregnant excuse (and props to that chick for quick thinking) still quite enjoy going into a church and waving some incense about or singing some songs.

Why? Because ritual is nice. Tradition is nice. It’s comforting. You know how it’s supposed to go, and it goes that way. As your life seems to be constantly morphing like it were a cutesy animate French-Canadian blob of plasticine, here is something that more or less stands still. Something that makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger.

On the wall of my house is a brittle, yellowed Leunig cartoon. It has been there since the republic referendum in 1999.

“Australia relax,” he says, “Have you forgotten how to enjoy Queens and Kings? Their beautiful golden carriages, their great castles and colourful flags? Their guards with swords?

“What’s the problem with that? Come on – your lips are all tight and pursed. Don’t be so mean and grim.

“If she waves, wave back. Try bowing if you please. It’s fun. Oh Australia, you’re all hyped up. Too much television and abstraction and caffeine. I double dare you to relax and have some Queen.”

And that, I’m afraid, seems to be the problem. Pursed lips, abstraction.

There are more than enough crapnesses going on in our world. Our cops are beating on people and denying it cold. Our Prime Minister couldn’t sell a cheeky foil to Keith Richards. Our Opposition Leader would send back Willy Wonka’s golden ticket with an angry letter.

You know who’s pretty sweet, though? The Queen. She’s nice to people. She pulls rocking crowds for an 85-year-old. She makes those people happy. There are a lot of them.

She represents dignity, she represents decency, and she represents history. She does all those things better than some president would do. And come on. Two thousand eggs a day. That’s impressive. So just relax. I’ll bring the bacon.

 

 

 

This piece was originally published on The Drum.

Robert Doyle is a fucking cunt

This morning on a certain social media site, I wrote, “Hey Robert Doyle. You’re a fucking cunt. That is all.” I did this because I think Robert Doyle is a fucking cunt. I also did it because the idea of addressing this information to him directly was pleasing, even in the form of a mock address. Various people immediately unsubscribed from receiving my updates (‘unfollowed’, if you’re in the know). The interesting question is how such people came to be following me in the first place. If someone is a) a Robert Doyle fan, or b) offended by phrases like ‘fucking cunt’, they probably shouldn’t be around my conversation at any time.

If you by chance are a Robert Doyle fan or offended by phrases like ‘fucking cunt’, then you’re a bit late, because I’ve already said ‘fucking cunt’ six times including that last one. And have linked the phrase directly to Robert Doyle. But you should probably still bail out now, because although I haven’t written it yet, I have a feeling this article will contain further instances of both these things.

If you’re not a) a Doyle fan or b) offended (i.e., if you are a reasonable person) then on we go. Of course, you may still want to sidetrack this into a debate about whether using ‘cunt’ as an insult is terribly sexist and cetera. Eric Dando’s  wonderful short story ‘Beautiful Useful Things’ contends that since cunts are the beautiful useful things of the title, the word should be high praise. (Some parts of the story are online here.) I tend to agree, and try using it in affectionate contexts as often as possible. Still. As TISM told us, there’s a big difference between a cunt and a fucking cunt, and this morning, I couldn’t think of any pithier way to describe what Robert Doyle is.

Here’s why. Robert Doyle is the mayor of Melbourne, and a failed human being of the highest order. His mediocrity in all pursuits is so impressive as to almost elevate him beyond the bounds of mediocrity. But not. His inherent ability to suck draws him back down. So Robert Doyle is not a fucking cunt in the way that someone like Phillip Ruddock was a fucking cunt. Phillip Ruddock was awful, relatively powerful, and dangerous. Robert Doyle is a useless fucking cunt.

I would say that “Robert Doyle first came to our attention in…”, but… he didn’t. He didn’t come to anyone’s attention. That’s something he’s never been able to do. Robert Doyle fell arse-backwards into the role of Victorian Opposition Leader for the Liberal Party back in 2002. Jeff Kennett had lost the previous election, spat the dummy like the petulant spotlight-hogger that he was, and quit. Lots of senior Liberals went with him, recognising that their days were done for quite some time. Only the dregs remained. Dennis Napthine then put in his bid to be the creepiest Liberal leader ever. He looked like a shifty cayman that had just discovered pomade, and no-one could listen to him speak for more than fifteen seconds without breaking out in hives. The fact that Napthine was even a contender showed what an awful state the party was in. Really he was the sacrifice, the Brendan Nelson, the guy to cop the damage of the previous loss, then be replaced. When he inevitably got the arse before the next election, there were still no other decent contenders. Enter the dullest man in politics, Robert Doyle.

Doyle was so dull he could have been captain of the Dullard Dulcimers Dullball team from Dulwich Village, Dullshire. Except captain would have been too interesting. He would have been the substitute who never got a game. At the time, my friend Rabbi and I were toying with the idea of starting a satirical newspaper. This never got off the ground, due to our alcohol intake and The Chaser emerging as a far better version of the same idea, but we did come up with some good content. Impressed by Doyle’s anonymity, one was the Liberal overthrow article titled “Napthine replaced by some guy.”

“Even deposed Liberal leader Dennis Napthine didn’t know who his replacement was. ‘I’ve never heard of him’, said Napthine. ‘Apparently he was some guy. That was enough to sound better than me. I voted for him.’”

“After speculation today that the new leader may have been Robert Doyle, even Robert Doyle denied knowing who Robert Doyle is.”

(This was probably my second-favourite piece we came up with. My favourite was when we reported, post-Tampa, that the Sri Lankan cricket team had been detained on arrival for a Test tour. “Australian vice-captain and wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist questioned the move, saying that detention seemed a harsh reaction to Muttiah Muralitharan’s suspect bowling action. Mr Ruddock later responded, saying ‘I don’t care if he’s got a correct action or not. He’s bloody well black, and he’s staying behind bars until he learns better.’”)

It was in office that Doyle’s predisposition to fucking cuntery began to make itself known. The guy was the definition of a windbag: huffing, hissing, complaining, a sheen of sweat constantly precipitating on that giant round head, like a big meat-balloon straining at its seams, sprayed down half-hourly with a solution of glycerine. Look at a bratwurst in a pan, greased and spitting and straining to split its skin – that’s Robert Doyle’s speaking face. He was haughty and irritating. He thought he knew better than everyone. It came as no surprise  to learn he’d been a teacher and administrator at Scotch College: he looked and sounded exactly the kind of dull disciplinarian who harked back to Tom Brown’s Schooldays for a simpler age when a bit of forcible buggery was what showed you the difference between boys and men.

He ran the Liberal Party into the ground, in a way that makes the Gillard government look sturdy and on course for victory. In the one election Doyle contested, the Libs won 17 of 88 seats. His approval rate as leader was polled at 15 percent. He was replaced, and quit after the next election loss in 2006.

Just the kind of stand-up guy that you wouldn’t want to lose to politics, right? So in 2008 he decided to contest for Lord Mayor of Melbourne. It was a hilarious portrait of an abject failure determined to try to claw out some kind of restitution, to find some balm for his abraded ego. He didn’t understand that Lord Mayor was a pointless ceremonial position that had been filled for years by a comedian using the alter ego of ‘John So’. Doyle took it seriously. It had ‘Lord’ in the title. It had robes and chains and shit. Finally he could be king of a crappy little castle.

And somehow – presumably because no-one thought to pay it the slightest attention – he won.

Since then, Doyle’s predilection for experimenting with various modes of fucking cuntaciousness has been expressed to its fullest extent. He’s like a washed up sprinter who, having failed at Olympic selection, and AIS selection, and state selection, and the university aths club, then gets in a drunken 100 metres challenge in the car park at the Mackay races and wins against two wasted cane-farmers and a blind kid, then runs around town for the next seven years yelling “Champion of north-eastern Australia!” He likes to think that he’s now important. He likes to think that we’ve all forgotten his burst colostomy bag of a career. Actually we mostly have, because nothing about him is memorable. But Doyle has not forgotten. His past burns at him like a superheated grass-burr lodged in his haemorrhoids. With every act and every word, Doyle is trying to compensate for the vividly-coloured tapestry of failure that is the conversation piece in the lobby of his life. He is shaking in a corner, rocking back and forth, masturbating furiously and whispering, “I’m important. I’m important. I’m important.”

So he struts about Melbourne like it’s a personal fiefdom. He comes up with stupid plans to get attention, grand visions for the city that apparently didn’t occur to him when he was… you know… in Parliament. He proclaims what kind of  people should and shouldn’t be allowed on his streets. He spends stupid amounts of money on marketing and new logos, while cranking up parking fines and enforcement to try to keep more cash coming in. And he talks. By god, that motherfucker just talks.

But this last week, we really got to see him being… well, a massive fucking cunt. As the Occupy Melbourne movement set up their protest in the city, he took it as a personal affront. Melbourne, you see, is his now. I’m the Mayor! I’m the LORD fucking Mayor, bitches! Look at my faux-fur! Look at my leopard spots! Look at my pendants! Yes, I look like a pimp out of a mid-90s ghetto movie send-up. Lick my stockings! Tell me I’m your Papa!

So how dare people who live in Melbourne and such, use the streets of their city as though they had a right to?

Now, I haven’t been in Australia the last couple of weeks. I’m following this from overseas. I don’t really get what Occupy is all about, and I’m not advocating for it. Personally it seems like yet another annoyingly amorphous protest movement, the same sort of thing that so royally gave me the shits at university. You’d walk past a rally against WorkChoices, and it would be full of people saving the whales and Jabiluka and abortions and the spotted quoll. Activists are very good at presumption, assuming that if you agree with one part of their agenda, you agree with all of it. Your support gets co-opted.

It sounds like there’s plenty of that going on with Occupy Melbourne – people treating it as the noticeboard to tack their particular grievance to. It sounds like the nutbars are amongst it, as they generally are. But it also sounds like there are plenty of sensible, reasonable people there, taking advantage of this opportunity to say that yes, business is too dominant a priority in government decision-making. Yes, companies are allowed to get away with things that would be criminal for individuals. Yes, industry has too much influence in Parliament. Just look at the mining giants felling a Prime Minister, or the political campaigns funded by industries against any reform they don’t like. No, our situation is not as bad as it is in the States. But our situation could turn sour very quickly.

Anyway. Regardless of the right or wrong of the argument being made, people in Australia have the right to protest. They have the right to assembly. At least, they theoretically have this right, but find that right ignored constantly by police whenever it suits police to do so.

And Robert Doyle, with that twitch in his pants that any school disciplinarian can’t resist, had another opportunity to have power over people. You’ve got detention. Your shirt isn’t tucked in. You’re going to get bashed on a public street by officers of the law.

So Doyle called in the cops, and told them to clear the protest out. One, he had no right to do it in the first place. Two, he didn’t bother trying to negotiate a compromise. Three, he knew it would get violent. Indeed, the whole purpose of it was to get violent. He wanted a show of force. He was spoiling for a fight. Four, we ended up with about 400 police, including riot squads and horses, to disperse less than 100 protesters.

And like a disingenuous tricky little cunt, he used the Queen’s visit as an excuse for his actions. Well, get fucked. This is our country, and this is what is happening in it. Why should the Queen be shielded from the reality of life in Australia? She is our head of state, after all. She really should be the first to know what’s actually going on.

The protesters, from the vision I’ve seen, behaved admirably. The police response was execrable. If you don’t believe me, try this clip from the bastion of socialist activism, The Herald Sun. 

In it, protestors passively sit or stand, arms linked, and refuse to move. Police hunt in packs, three or four of them charging someone, then dragging them out of the group by their head, neck, and arms. They drag them across the ground, injuring and frightening the hell out of them.  They do it to women as happily as to men. Tell me, if someone did that to your mate’s girlfriend on a night out, what would happen? Outrage? Yep. Punch-on? Probably. Press charges? No doubt. But because the assailants are acting under orders, it’s suddenly ok? The media reports include factoids like “two police were injured”, without mentioning that they were injured by their own pepper spray, being used on people who had not committed a crime, could not legally be arrested, and were not resisting.

This is police-state bullshit that has no place here. And yet it will be tolerated, and there will be an investigation, and some moustache will say “the officers were found to have behaved appropriately”, even though there are dozens of videos right there on the internet that show this is not true. The police will be allowed to get away with it because the police always are, and until that changes, all this talk of our freedoms is police-horse-shit.

“The time has come for us to return City Square to the people of Melbourne”, said Doyle. Hey Cuntcillor. Those are the people of Melbourne. That’s their city square. The city square being the place that for thousands of years has been a meeting place and a rally point, an exchange of information and ideas. Using that space is one of their basic rights. Your approval of the way they use it means three-fifths of jack-shit. Then there’s the other Doyle line: “there comes a time when you say okay you’ve made your point, time’s up.” Again: bullshit. There is no time limit on civil rights. How do you know what point they’re making? You haven’t even been willing to speak to them, to engage in the democratic process of which you are supposedly a part.

It’s the lack of outrage that’s the outrageous bit. The general reaction seems to be, hey, everyone has the right to free assembly and to protest. Oh, except that it’s a bit inconvenient when you do that, because it kind of gets in the way. So you have that right as long as you’re not in the way, and you have less of that right if we think you’re just a bunch of lefty ferals, and if you insist on that right then we have the right to get you roughed up and intimidated and hauled off by cops, even though we won’t charge you, because you haven’t broken any laws.

The real clincher, the sheep’s eyeball on the sewage sundae, was the vision of Doyle peering down from his office window at the chaos in the street below. The chaos he had decided to inflict. He looked for all the world like some wannabe French nobleman, watching his soldiers quell a peasant uprising. Not prepared to engage with the reality, but happy to watch from afar. Knowing he was safe and warm in his office as people were injured in the arena. What a cunt. He would do well to remember what happened to a lot of those French noblemen when the crowds in the street could no longer be quelled.

That image tells us everything we need to know. The violent response to Occupy is all about a man with delusions of grandeur. It’s a way for one crap official to get territorial about something he thinks is his. It’s a chance for Doyle, the most pathetic failure in Australian politics, to suddenly swing a fat salami around and imagine it’s his cock. Briefly, ever so briefly, he can pretend. Of course, we all know it’ll fade. We all know that he’ll come to his senses, in that post-climax pit of self-loathing, and see himself as he really is: a grotesque caricature of a man, corpulent and swollen, petty and pointless, standing naked in front of the mirror with some choice Don smallgoods hanging greasy from his mitt, no longer shielding him from the grim fact of his own inconsequence. He knows it too. That’s why he’s so bitter. That’s why he’s so desperate. That’s why for as long as his lungs hate him enough to let him keep on breathing, he’ll keep taking it out on the world by being the biggest utter fucking cunt he possibly can. And that’s why I wanted to tell him.

Here is my father

A writers festival on the New South Wales central coast is probably the closest you can come to watching the AFL Grand Final in a vacuum. There were expat bars in every country in the world displaying more interest than the entire city of Newcastle. The only venue even playing it was the RSL, with the sound down in favour of horse races.

Fortunate to be bunked with the only other Cat fan in town, we eventually ran back to our accommodation in time for the bounce, and at least had one kindred soul to share the shouting. We met the festival’s Saturday night swelling with joy, and no place to direct it. Whenever Geir mentioned football to someone, the response was, “I have to pee.”

In Melbourne, you can feel the Grand Final in the air. The build-up lasts all week. Not just the media glut, but a kind of nervous energy. Scarves sprouting out of cars like some strange acrylic rash. Spring air crackling like power lines, leaves hustling up the cold streets.

It’s that ubiquity that makes the anti-fans apoplectic. Grand Final week is when they most shrilly voice their fierce disdain of our gladiatorial obsession and mouth-breathing tendencies. Seeing so many people enjoying themselves in a way you can’t comprehend must be like going to an ice-cream convention after your tongue was shot off in the war.

You can’t explain the love of sport, just as other devotees can’t explain Nureyev or heavy metal or crossbow hunting. It either speaks to you or it never will. Perhaps you’re born into it. I was certainly born into supporting Geelong. Dad did, and I thought he was the greatest human on earth. Not much has changed.

Read on at Crikey.

Spelling Bee live blog

15:55: Tension is mounting here in the Festival Club as we count down to lift-off. Lawrence Leung is crawling around on stage like a demented feline trying to connect the tech. Audience names are being placed into a tin, along with suggestions for fiendishly difficult words from the audience.

I will be live blogging the entire event within this post. So you will need to refresh the page to get updates. Garth is sitting next to me, with the swirling nerves that come with being defending champion. The others in this room have nothing to lose. And you know what they say. Desperate men spell with utmost clarity.

16:06: Festival director Zoe Norton Lodge will be co-presenting, dressed in a manner that I can only describe as like a slender Magda Szubanski. Leung has announced the start, and away we go.

16:08: There will be three rounds. The winner of each round will go straight into the Grand Final round, where they will take on the defending champion.

16:10: Answer protocol is being laid out. Several people are in each round. They will be called to the microphone one by one and be given a word. They may ask for context. They may go back and correct their word once, as long as they have not marked their completed attempt by repeating the word at the end of spelling.

Round 1
First round will be Anna, Frank, and Erin, as drawn from the audience. A fourth contestant is being chosen as a wildcard, by way of an audience-wide game of Cheese or Font.

16:17: Ben is our wildcard. It’s quarter past four and people are already wasted drunk and heckling. Go artists.

16:17: Erin gets ‘accommodate’ first up. A big trap for young players. She drops the second M as expected. Erin had pre-identified as a dyslexic, so not entirely sure of her motivation in entering, but you have to be in it.

Frank gets ‘acquire’. He’s hesitant, you can smell the fear coming off him, but after a tentative attempt or two, he gets it right. Nicely played Frank.

Anna lands ‘abysmal’. She pins it on the first attempt without too much hesitation. An early contender.

Ben gets ‘focused’. That’s a tricky one – could argue for the American double S, but we’re playing Macquarie Dictionary rules, so Ben gets the correct English spelling.

16:22: Frank gets ‘lieutenants’, but gets tangled on the early vowel-pie that the French so often like to cook. Wait till we whip out the bureaux and manoeuvres.

Anna then steps up to take Frank’s word, and nails it. Ben then lands ‘omniscience’. Another toughie early on. It seems like he forgets where he is, and stumbles. The contenders are down, and Anna is through to the grand final.

Round 2
Contestants are Alice, Claire, Emily, and Cheese or Font wildcard Phil.

Alice lands ‘hierarchy’ first up. She sadly drops the second R – hard to visualise these things in only the mind’s eye. She’s consulting with Garth on her way off stage.

Emily gets ‘entrepreneur’. Falls at the first hurdle. George Bush couldn’t spell it either, so don’t feel bad. Or something. Claire makes a bit of a hash of it too, and Phil does a Bradbury right through into the grand final round without having to spell a word. He decides to have a go anyway. This could be embarrassing.

And it is! He actually spells it worse than either of the previous attempts. Ellena Savage gets up on stage as an audience challenge. Lawrence is so taken by her radiance (left over from last night’s Circus Ball) that he half falls off the stage. Ellena nails the spelling faultlessly, and Phil is booted. Thank God for that. I think he spelled it ‘enterapranour’.

Round 3
16:36: Betty, Aaron, Emma. The wildcard in this round is being picked by Real Book/Fake Book. Real books so far have included How to Bombproof Your Horse, How to Avoid Huge Ships, and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. Former festival director Sarah Gory reluctantly wins and is almost dragged onstage.

Betty gets ‘Armageddon’. A deceptively straightforward one. She’s second-guessing herself. Doubts flit across her face. Hesitance. But she gets it. World doesn’t end.

Aaron gets ‘cataclysm’. He nails it without a second hesitation. Aaron and Anna from Round 1 are my early picks.

Emma gets ‘kaleidoscope’. She absolutely creams it. No hesitation at all. Good signs.

Sarah gets ‘baccalaureate’. She just slightly goes awry, I think it was the middle U that did it. Betty is back to the mic. Can she make it happen? She does it. Not without some stops and pauses and go-backs, but we get there.

Aaron gets that old crowd favourite ‘diarrhoea’. It’s the vowel-filled ending that gives you the shits, but he spurts it straight into the bowl. True as an arrow.

Emma gets ‘pterodactyl’ and has no problems whatsoever. I want to date her now. Betty is back with ‘blaggard’. Another deceptively simple one. She’s over-thinking it. There’s so much consternation on Betty’s face. It’s like an episode of Neighbours going on between her nose and eyebrows. She stumbles. Aaron is up. He knows no fear. But his confidence is misplaced. He goes for ‘blaguard’. And no! Emma is through.

But wait! There’s a challenge from the crowd! An Irishman has surged onto the stage wanting to spell it. Emma steps up to the mic. She gets it wrong. She’s still up though, Irish has to spell it to beat her. He gets it wrong too! ‘Blagguard’. I’m not sure where these spellings are coming from.

And here’s the twist! They’re using Maquarie. They’re using ‘blackguard’ but pronouncing it ‘blaggard’. Oh, the humanity. Still, the right result has been reached. Emma goes through. Drinks break.

Final round
So I kind of disappeared there. The truth is I was rather abruptly called up on stage to contest the final.

Ellena fell early while still in the elimination stage. With four left, we were given an immunity challenge, rearranging letters in a Scrabble style to spell the names of IKEA furniture.

Emma crashed out on ‘bivouacking’, one I was glad to avoid given the uncertainty over whether a K would be required. Garth went strongly for a time, but bowed out on ‘hors d’oeuvres’, after taking too many attempts at the word. It was down to two. The crowd cheered for the unflappable Anna, and poured their loathing and scorn on me, mostly because they’re a bunch of racists.

The head-to-head went on through several exhausting and thrillerating rounds, trading correct spellings, blow for blow, like Macbeth and Macduff.

Bivouacking, she said.

Bourgeoisie, said I.

Haemorrhage.

Bougainvillea.

Separate.

Paraphernalia.

Daedalist.

Gauche.

Geyser.

Obsequious.

Onomatopoeia.

It was ‘porphyry’ that got me. What is it, I asked. “It’s a disease,” yelled someone in the audience. No, it’s not. Porphyria is a disease. Porphyry is a type of igneous rock. Not that the definition would have helped with a word I’ve never head of. Anna spelt it easy as knocking a kitten on the head. Clinical. Knowledgeable. Universally acclaimed. The National Young Writers festival has a new champion, ladies and gentlemen. Garth and I shall retire that hall for warriors past, to mull over with Mick Malthouse how to spell ‘kismet’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Escape from Spellingdome

The National Young Writers Festival Spelling Bee is a brutal contest steeped in tradition. Throughout its esteemed two-year history, the Spelling Bee has become a byword for naked aggression, for raw bleeding humanity, for the ultimate arena in which courage is tested. Hopefuls hurl themselves against the grinding-plates of French vowel constructions, find themselves done in by the dastardly ‘i before e’ lie.

In its inaugural edition, it was my good fortune to take home the prize, a globe of the world studded with real live fake bees, on the back to the word ‘sequacious’. The following year saw me fall foul of the extra L in ‘beryllium’, before one of the previous year’s late-stage contenders in Garth Hughes-Odgers took the title. This year we shall both be in the building, with the ever-expanding line-up of hopefuls, and I will attempt to live-blog the experience for you.

Crossword-maker Mark Sutton has compiled this year’s word list – no downloaded compendium here, but a hand-picked listing of the most deceptive words the man can find. Bear with me – the Bee starts at 4.