They're a weird mob

 

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Based on the bestselling novel by a former pharmacist called John O'Grady (writing under the pseudonym Nino Culotta), "They're a Weird Mob" tells the story of an Italian journalist's encounter with the strange manners, language and rituals of postwar Australia.

It's a benign portrait of the migrant experience in Australia, and gently mocks the nation's dominant Anglo-Saxon suburbanite culture. It's a great snapshot of life in 1960s Australia, the one I fell in love with when I arrived here in 1965. In the book, Nino never encounters prejudice; he is accepted easily into Australian society because he in turn accepts so easily its habits of speech and thought. In real life, I, a Hun, also never encountered prejudice and was easily accepted into Australian society - with just the odd encounter in some of the cheaper fa(s)t food outlets:

 

 

The book - and the movie - arrived in Australia before the advent of Al Grassby's multiculturalism in the 70s, which acknowledged the right for citizens to maintain their own culture. I think Al Grassby got it wrong, and Nino Culotta got it exactly right when he writes in the book:

"There are far too many New Australians in this country who are still mentally living in their homelands, who mix with people of their own nationality, and try to retain their own language and customs. Who even try to persuade Australians to adopt their customs and manners. Cut it out. There is no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian. I firmly belive this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludges on no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed. And once you have entered it, you will lever leave it."

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Perhaps we should all watch the movie and read the book again to realise how much we have lost and how little we have gained from all this "multiculturalism". It's a sunny Sunday afternoon at "Riverbend" which fits in well with the last paragraph in Nino Culotta's book:

"There are hundreds of ways we could spend this sunny Sunday afternoon. Or we could just stay at home and do nothing, and perhaps that would be the best of all. To rest on the seventh day. To thank God for letting us be here. To thank Him for letting me be an Australian. Sometimes I think that if I am ever fortunate enough to reach Heaven, I will know I am there when I hear Him say, 'Howyergoin'mate orright?'"

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What is a woman?

Matt Walsh's documentary is free to watch on Twitter for the next 24 hours
Watch this really scary documentary at your own peril here!

 

Is this even a question? All of a sudden, far too many people don't seem to know the answer. Is a woman a woman just by feeling or acting a particular way? Aren't gender roles just a "social construct"? Can a woman be "trapped in a man's body"? Does being a woman mean anything at all?

We used to think being a woman had something to do with biology, but the nation's top experts keep assuring us that is definitely not the case. So Matt Walsh decided to do what no man (whatever that means) had done before. He sat down with the experts and asked them directly.

The results are a documentary which you can view here and a book which, last time I looked, would cost me some fifty dollars to buy.

 

 

That's too much for my pocket. Anyway, I'm still busy reading "How to understand a Woman - Part - 1" without getting distracted by this new question of what a woman is or which bathroom to use at the pool.

 

 

Maybe the Chinese will cure us of this collective insanity that has taken over Western society. How do you ask "What is a woman?" in Mandarin?

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Lord of the Fries

 

A recent visit to Sydney brought back literary memories as we walked down King Street and saw the fish 'n' chips shop "Lord of the Fries". Nice play on words, I thought, but does anyone still remember William Golding's book, published in 1954, or the 1963 movie of the same name?

(There was a second film adaptation in 1990 which, in my opinion, is not as good as the 1963 original. Alex Garland's book "The Beach", and the adventure drama film of the same name, starring teenage idol Leonardo DiCaprio, have much in common with the original "Lord of the Flies".)

Of course, the story of "Lord of the Flies" never happened. An English schoolmaster made it up in 1951. "Wouldn't it be a good idea", William Golding asked his wife one day, "to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?"

Golding's book "Lord of the Flies" would ultimately sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than thirty languages and be hailed as one of the classics of the twentieth century.

In hindsight, the secret to the book's success is clear. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. "Even if we start with a clean slate", he wrote in his first letter to his publisher, "our nature compels us to make a muck of it." Or as he later put it, "Man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Unlike English-speaking children who read "Lord of the Flies" at school, my schooling - as limited as it was - in post-war Germany required no special reading about the evil that human nature was capable of, as the legacy of it could still be seen all around. It was only in the late sixties here in Australia, while still reduced to linguistic toddlerhood in my newly-adopted language English, that I first tried to read this book.

 

Fast-forward to 7:40 to start the documentary

 

Perhaps "Lord of the Flies" is not the most apropriate reading in these troubled times as it may easily get you trapped into hopelessness. Because if you believe most people are rotten, you no longer need to get worked up about injustice. The world is going to hell either way.

If you are tempted by such cynical thoughts, please do NOT click on these links to read the book or watch the 1990 movie adaptation.

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Postprandial reflections

 

As I wrote elsewhere, when we drove into the Bay last Friday, the ENGINE warning light lit up on the dashboard. The hastily called NRMA breakdown mechanic plugged in his computer and diagnosed an "EGR VALVE" problem.

The hastily consulted car mechanic - who shall remain unnamed - told me, "Your car needs a new EGR valve. I won't be able to get one in until next Tuesday, and it'll take several hours to fix. That'll be $660, thanks!"

Thanks to the internet, these days we can always get a second opinion to keep the bastards honest. In this case I was able to find out that the price of an EGR valve was anywhere from $45 (postage paid) up to two hundred dollars. So how did my unnamed mechanic arrive at his $660?

After this second opinion I rang a second mechanic and was quoted $400. I dropped the car off with them at 8.30 a.m. and they rang me at 9.30 a.m. to say it was ready again for pick-up. That's an hour's work!

 

 

I reflected on this over a second glass of chardonnay after a very satisfying lunch of lambs fry and bacon at the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club. I don't eat any awful offal except for lambs fry which brings back memories of my mother's cooking, and this one really hit the spot.

Having just saved myself $260, I could treat myself to lambs fry and bacon for the next two week. Thank you, Batemans Bay Tyre Service!

 

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Waterlogged

Alice Roberts embarks on a quest to discover what lies behind the passion for wild swimming, now becoming popular in Britain. She follows in the wake of "Waterlog", the classic swimming text by journalist and author Roger Deakin. Her journey takes in cavernous plunge pools, languid rivers and unfathomable underground lakes, as well as a skinny dip in a moorland pool. Along the way Alice becomes aware that she is not alone on her watery journey.

 

When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is - water - and it begins to move with the water around you. No wonder we feel such sympathy for beached whales; we are beached ourselves at birth. To swim is to experience how it was before you were born. Once in the water, you are immersed in an intensely private world as you were in the womb. These amniotic waters are both utterly safe and yet terrifying, for at birth anything could go wrong, and you are assailed by all kinds of unknown forces over which you have no control. This may account for the anxieties every swimmer experiences from time to time in deep water. A swallow dive off the high board into the void is an image that brings together all the contradictions of birth. The swimmer experiences the terror and the bliss of being born."

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

I am quoting from "Waterlog" which is, at its most basic, what the title suggests — an assiduous "log" of each of Roger Deakin’s encounters with water. He was an environmentalist and writer who conceived the idea to swim through the waterways of Britain which resulted in this beautiful ode to the act of swimming outdoors that morphs into a rousing reminder of the importance of caring for the environment.

The ensuing "wild swimming", as it became known, owes its popularity to the seductiveness of Deakin's writing. In his book, Deakin re-creates the sensuousness and sublimity of his swims so well that at times you find yourself holding your breath. "From water level, I observed the mating dragonflies joined in flight like refuelling aircraft, and the random progress of the dandelion clocks that drifted on the thermals over the moat", Deakin observes. "I kept meeting a solitary whirligig beetle making its way from one end to the other in a series of loops and circles like calligraphy". An eel is "so mottled and green and varnished in mucus it could be an uprooted plant, a mandrake root come to life".

This is travel at its most intimate, among invisible denizens one would normally ignore. After reading this book, you'd be hard-pressed to waste time enduring the boredom of swimming laps in a sterile pool.

Which is, of course, what we have been doing ever since we took out membership at the Bay's Aquatic Centre where the only 'beached whales' we encounter are other geriatrics, and the only things 'intensely private' are some of the talks with other swimmers who seem to shed their inhibitions together with their clothes. As for terror, Jake the lifeguard strikes terror in my heart every time he starts on one of his sick jokes.

When it comes to the healing power of being immersed in water, Roger Deakin has the last word: "I can dive in with a long face and what feels like a terminal case of depression, and come out a whistling idiot."

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