Contains strong language. Which is ironic, as the beer is pretty weak.
My beer mat informs me that Victoria Bitter has a new slogan.
Victoria Bitter - VB to its friends of which it has very few publicly - is a beer. An iconic Australian beer, if by you iconic you mean “yeah mate, it’s Aussie as, but I don’t drink it coz it’s shit”.
Except they do. It’s cheap and cheerful and accounts for a third of the pre-packaged beers sales in Australia. Note that pre-packaged bit. You’d bring a VB home to quench your thirst, but you wouldn’t order it in the pub. Drinking VB is a bit like sleeping with your ex. It’s not really classy, but everyone has done it when there was nothing else available. Especially if they were already drunk and it was just hanging about at a party. It’s okay to drink, provided no one knows.
Their long standing slogan, which said VB was “for a hard-earned thirst” was at least evocative in that it reflected the product. VB is for a hard-earned thirst, because dying of semi-dehydration is one of things that makes its bland yet acidic taste semi-palatable. It’s a slogan that has served VB well, with its phenomenal sales despite being universally derided as a shit beer that isn’t even actually a bitter.
But they’re dropping it. From now on VB shall be known as – the drinking beer.
I’m sorry, what? Honestly, what genius came up with this slogan? How much did they pay some marketeer to take five seconds off complaining that on Twitter that their iPhone won’t work to come up with this particular gem? Can I have their job? I’ve always loved stating the obvious in a condescending fashion and I can come up with all sorts of things right now. Nescafe – the drinking coffee. Oxygen – the breathing gas. Myers – the shopping shop.
Quickly, someone get me a medal, because that’s three award-winning campaigns right there.
Of course it’s the drinking beer. ALL beers are the drinking beer. What the hell else do you do with them? You don’t market a brand by saying it can do thing it’s meant to, unless you can claim other products don’t do it as well. What, the other beers are dehydrated? Made of sawdust and glass chips? Contain acid and dead flies? Are currently on fucking fire? What?
Every beer is the drinking beer. Unless you are the premium luxury brand in your niche, you can’t claim ownership of the need without looking like a total twat. (And even then, you look a tad twatty, but hey, label bunnies just love that posh twat look.) All beers are for drinking. How does this differentiate your product from all the others? What the hell are they for?
You can split hairs and suggest while YOUR beer is for drinking, the other beers still have space to pick a niche – they could be the quaffing beer, or the sipping beer, or the peeing like a racehorse beer, or the beer that comes back up easy, but you are just being full of crap. It’s not “modern”, it’s not “pared-down” or “simplistic” or “a return to base values”; it’s lazy, it’s stupid and it shows your product has nothing to offer.
And the annoying thing is, with a little modification it could have been a slogan that captured the essence of Victoria Bitter and what it means to Australia. VB - the drinking when there is nothing else to drink beer. VB - the “it was free at the party” beer. The “It’s only 10am, and I’m already at a happy hour” beer, the “I drink tinnies on my lunchbreak” beer, the “this is my child support I am drinking” beer.
But no. Instead we get a slogan as bland as the beer itself. Which – despite and to spite the slogan - I won’t be drinking.
Unless, you know, there’s nothing else. Or it’s free at a party. Or I’m too drunk to notice.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
WTF?
KR, he says.
Right there at the end of the email he sent looking to introduce his PR firm. Just before his name. KR.
I have no idea what it means.
Keith Richards? Keep Right? Keep Rocking?
And then it dawns on me. “KR” is short for Kind Regards. This man, this abomination of a PR man who is looking to make a good first impression on me and my firm, not ONLY uses the most fatuous and over-gentrified closing since “Yours most humbly affectionate” bit the dust in the sixteenth century but he can’t even be arsed to write it all.
Kind regards is foul enough. Victorian and stilted in its vagueness and yet capable of starting an arms race of affection. Someone signs “Kind regards”, and then someone has to beat them with “KindEST regards” and the whole thing gets totally out of control with “My most kind regards” and “Yours with the kindest of regards” and “Prostrating my most humble self on your bidet to offer the very kindest of my kind regards”.
Or the person who tries to play the strong silent type and writes merely “Regards” with no indication of how kind they are.
And exactly how kind are the regards? I mean, would you donate your house to me, or just a few bucks for a coffee? Do they have no monetary element redeemable? Are we talking pouring your cup of tea on me if I was on fire, or saying “I hope the burns get better soon” as I am carted screaming in agony into the ambulance?
Kind regards. Could you vague that up for me a bit?
For added Victorian style – because nothing says polite like a group of people who used to encase their privates in metal to prevent “self abuse” – you can for no apparent reason capitalise everything. “Kind Regards.” It’s especially good if you wrongly put a capital R on regards but forget to put a capital on your own damned name.
Or just dispense with the piddling matters of letter altogether and go with “KR”. How informal! How, well, how little like you even care slightly about the opinion of your reader. Nothing says “can’t be arsed” like not bothering to finish your words.
In fact, why not just close your email with “Yeah, whatever”? I’m sorry, we’re being modern now - that mean disregarding the most basic of niceties and ease of reading – let’s use “YW”.
Or not. Look, I have had it up to here with clever buggers from PR and marketing telling the world that correct grammar and capitalisation are “dated”, that we should be mixing it up with txtspk outside of texts. The first purpose of writing something is not to be funky, but to be readable. You are writing so other people can understand what you have said.
Ignore PR twatboy in the corner desperately trying to justify his consultancy fee by spewing turdery and write correctly. Have the courage to make it look like your company is smart enough to master basic communication. Capitalise correctly. Use punctuation. Go fecking crazy; care about your customers’ reading experience. Or prepare to have people take one look at your garbage and conclude you are morons who can’t be trusted with a keyboard, let alone a PR budget.
My response?
TL;DR*
*Too Long; Didn’t Read
Right there at the end of the email he sent looking to introduce his PR firm. Just before his name. KR.
I have no idea what it means.
Keith Richards? Keep Right? Keep Rocking?
And then it dawns on me. “KR” is short for Kind Regards. This man, this abomination of a PR man who is looking to make a good first impression on me and my firm, not ONLY uses the most fatuous and over-gentrified closing since “Yours most humbly affectionate” bit the dust in the sixteenth century but he can’t even be arsed to write it all.
Kind regards is foul enough. Victorian and stilted in its vagueness and yet capable of starting an arms race of affection. Someone signs “Kind regards”, and then someone has to beat them with “KindEST regards” and the whole thing gets totally out of control with “My most kind regards” and “Yours with the kindest of regards” and “Prostrating my most humble self on your bidet to offer the very kindest of my kind regards”.
Or the person who tries to play the strong silent type and writes merely “Regards” with no indication of how kind they are.
And exactly how kind are the regards? I mean, would you donate your house to me, or just a few bucks for a coffee? Do they have no monetary element redeemable? Are we talking pouring your cup of tea on me if I was on fire, or saying “I hope the burns get better soon” as I am carted screaming in agony into the ambulance?
Kind regards. Could you vague that up for me a bit?
For added Victorian style – because nothing says polite like a group of people who used to encase their privates in metal to prevent “self abuse” – you can for no apparent reason capitalise everything. “Kind Regards.” It’s especially good if you wrongly put a capital R on regards but forget to put a capital on your own damned name.
Or just dispense with the piddling matters of letter altogether and go with “KR”. How informal! How, well, how little like you even care slightly about the opinion of your reader. Nothing says “can’t be arsed” like not bothering to finish your words.
In fact, why not just close your email with “Yeah, whatever”? I’m sorry, we’re being modern now - that mean disregarding the most basic of niceties and ease of reading – let’s use “YW”.
Or not. Look, I have had it up to here with clever buggers from PR and marketing telling the world that correct grammar and capitalisation are “dated”, that we should be mixing it up with txtspk outside of texts. The first purpose of writing something is not to be funky, but to be readable. You are writing so other people can understand what you have said.
Ignore PR twatboy in the corner desperately trying to justify his consultancy fee by spewing turdery and write correctly. Have the courage to make it look like your company is smart enough to master basic communication. Capitalise correctly. Use punctuation. Go fecking crazy; care about your customers’ reading experience. Or prepare to have people take one look at your garbage and conclude you are morons who can’t be trusted with a keyboard, let alone a PR budget.
My response?
TL;DR*
*Too Long; Didn’t Read
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A guide to taking travel photos. Don't.
I love both to travel and to talk about travelling. It interests me; the places people have been, why they went there, what they saw and what they ate and who they met and what they did. I love to ask questions and find out the best and worst bits of people’s trip. It’s fascinating.
Right up until the point where they pull out the photo album. Then my eyes glaze over and my brain goes into sleep mode as I prepare to be bored silly.
I blame digital cameras. Back in the good old days when people accepted travellers' diarrhoea as a normal part of travel (for God’s sake, just drink fluids and stop WHINING) and cameras had films and cost lots of money to develop, people took less photos. Instead of twelve pictures of the same sunset, they took one really nice one. You didn’t get endless shots from the train window and the plane window and the inside of the local police station, it cost too much to develop.
But thanks to the advents of digital bloody cameras, people feel unfettered in the amount of shots they can take and bore you to tears with on their return. A quick check of my camera reveals it can hold over 1,500 photos. That’s a few hours of your life you will never get back if I decide to bore you.
Reckon you’re not a bore or need to classify a bore? There are lots of different types, divided by intent and favoured photo type, but united in their wish to drivel at you about their pictures until your neck is sore from nodding and your eyeballs have atrophied in your skull.
There’s the scenery bore, usually a single traveller who takes endless shots of the landscape and shots of themselves standing in front of the landscape, safe in the knowledge that their precious holiday pictures are unsoiled by any sign of social interaction.
“This, this is a shot of a waterfall. It was very pretty. You can see them, um, waterfall right there. And this is a shot of the same waterfall from a different spot. This is a close up. This is the waterfall from the first spot with me standing in front of it. Oh look, me again, I always take two shots in case I have my eyes closed when the timer goes. No wait, I take three. Look, there I am. Oh, and a waterfall. And here’s that waterfall again. Will you just look at all that water? Just stunning.”
There’s the opposite, the social bore, who not only talks you through two hundred shots of people you have never and will never meet, but tells you in detail about them.
“We met this couple, Sheila and Barney, at the taxi rank in the airport. Sheila is a retired school teacher and Barney flambés squid in Ohio. She was wearing this hat, I’ll never forget it, it was red and we asked why it was so red and do you know, she said she just liked the colour red and she knit it herself. Imagine that. Red. Hilarious couple. Now, this, this was the cab-driver...”
Or the amnesiac couple who need to agree on the inconsequential details of what each shot is.
“Oh this, this is that temple – John, was this the temple with the statues? It was? – We went to this temple on the – John, was it the third or the fifth day? No, no I think it was the fifth. You had that food poisoning, remember? You were all runny bottom and had to stay near the loo. I told you not to eat the salad. – We went on the fifth day. Look, you can see a statue.”
Be especially of careful amazing facts man. It may look as though he has very few photos, but he can talk for days on each.
“Now this, this is interesting. This particular beach you are looking at is the northernmost mid-to-light grain yellow sanded beach in the South Eastern region. Some people say that that title should go to another beach down the road, but that you see has a distinctly different type of sand, mid-mid-light grain yellow, which some people get confused with the far more scenic mid-to-light grain yellow. I don’t know why, it’s very easy to tell the difference when you measure the grains.”
If you really, really feel you need to share your photos with people, pick the twenty best ones. And stick with that. Yes, I know you have forty shots of sunrise on day one alone. No, they’re not as good as you think. After the first one, they all look the same.
Those fantastic streetscape shots you love look like a blurry, badly composed mess. Mountains all look the same after the first two pictures. We’ve all seen the English policemen, funny hats and all, enough times. Ancient ruins all look similar after the first few. The sea always looks the same, always. Those shots you took of you by raising the camera over your head make you look like a sad loser without even the social skills to persuade someone else to take a photo for you. Put the fecking camera DOWN and go DO something.
I’d rather hear the story than see the picture. And if the story is good enough, you might be able to persuade someone else to take the photos while you have fun.
Just try to make sure that it’s not the police.
Right up until the point where they pull out the photo album. Then my eyes glaze over and my brain goes into sleep mode as I prepare to be bored silly.
I blame digital cameras. Back in the good old days when people accepted travellers' diarrhoea as a normal part of travel (for God’s sake, just drink fluids and stop WHINING) and cameras had films and cost lots of money to develop, people took less photos. Instead of twelve pictures of the same sunset, they took one really nice one. You didn’t get endless shots from the train window and the plane window and the inside of the local police station, it cost too much to develop.
But thanks to the advents of digital bloody cameras, people feel unfettered in the amount of shots they can take and bore you to tears with on their return. A quick check of my camera reveals it can hold over 1,500 photos. That’s a few hours of your life you will never get back if I decide to bore you.
Reckon you’re not a bore or need to classify a bore? There are lots of different types, divided by intent and favoured photo type, but united in their wish to drivel at you about their pictures until your neck is sore from nodding and your eyeballs have atrophied in your skull.
There’s the scenery bore, usually a single traveller who takes endless shots of the landscape and shots of themselves standing in front of the landscape, safe in the knowledge that their precious holiday pictures are unsoiled by any sign of social interaction.
“This, this is a shot of a waterfall. It was very pretty. You can see them, um, waterfall right there. And this is a shot of the same waterfall from a different spot. This is a close up. This is the waterfall from the first spot with me standing in front of it. Oh look, me again, I always take two shots in case I have my eyes closed when the timer goes. No wait, I take three. Look, there I am. Oh, and a waterfall. And here’s that waterfall again. Will you just look at all that water? Just stunning.”
There’s the opposite, the social bore, who not only talks you through two hundred shots of people you have never and will never meet, but tells you in detail about them.
“We met this couple, Sheila and Barney, at the taxi rank in the airport. Sheila is a retired school teacher and Barney flambés squid in Ohio. She was wearing this hat, I’ll never forget it, it was red and we asked why it was so red and do you know, she said she just liked the colour red and she knit it herself. Imagine that. Red. Hilarious couple. Now, this, this was the cab-driver...”
Or the amnesiac couple who need to agree on the inconsequential details of what each shot is.
“Oh this, this is that temple – John, was this the temple with the statues? It was? – We went to this temple on the – John, was it the third or the fifth day? No, no I think it was the fifth. You had that food poisoning, remember? You were all runny bottom and had to stay near the loo. I told you not to eat the salad. – We went on the fifth day. Look, you can see a statue.”
Be especially of careful amazing facts man. It may look as though he has very few photos, but he can talk for days on each.
“Now this, this is interesting. This particular beach you are looking at is the northernmost mid-to-light grain yellow sanded beach in the South Eastern region. Some people say that that title should go to another beach down the road, but that you see has a distinctly different type of sand, mid-mid-light grain yellow, which some people get confused with the far more scenic mid-to-light grain yellow. I don’t know why, it’s very easy to tell the difference when you measure the grains.”
If you really, really feel you need to share your photos with people, pick the twenty best ones. And stick with that. Yes, I know you have forty shots of sunrise on day one alone. No, they’re not as good as you think. After the first one, they all look the same.
Those fantastic streetscape shots you love look like a blurry, badly composed mess. Mountains all look the same after the first two pictures. We’ve all seen the English policemen, funny hats and all, enough times. Ancient ruins all look similar after the first few. The sea always looks the same, always. Those shots you took of you by raising the camera over your head make you look like a sad loser without even the social skills to persuade someone else to take a photo for you. Put the fecking camera DOWN and go DO something.
I’d rather hear the story than see the picture. And if the story is good enough, you might be able to persuade someone else to take the photos while you have fun.
Just try to make sure that it’s not the police.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Today in MX, I tell a million Australians how I got stuck in a vending machine.
I’m tired and cranky and falling over when I try to put on my trousers. Not really an ideal state to go to work in.
Drinking with friends until 4am always seems like a great idea at the time. Not so much the next day, and even less when you have to work.
So, what’s good for exhaustion and hangovers? Caffeine’s always good. Unfortunately, the killer hangover means coffee is not an option. The mere thought of it makes me feel sick.
So, I decide I can probably handle a cup of tea. Tea has anti-toxidants or anti-oxidents or something. I'm unsure which, but I am figuring that it will either kill the toxic stuff (good) or the oxygen in my system (bad, but at least I'll be too dead to be hungover).
Picking up my MP3 player, I head to the kitchen to make myself a nice cuppa. Humming along happily, I realize that my player has hit the South Park bit, and Chef is starting his thing.
Oh, I love Chocolate Salty Balls. I start singing along with music on my headphones.
One cup of tea is made, and due to my total lack of depth perception (always tricky when you are hungover) I fill it far too full. I’m feeling peckish and decide to head over to the snack machine to get a nice bag of cheese and onion crisps.
Darn, I have nowhere to put my tea down. It keeps spilling burning liquid over my hand and soaking my trousers. Well, the quicker I get the crisps...
I put the cash in the machine and hit buttons and the spin-y thing spins and ... oh dear. It hasn’t gone quite far enough. The bloody crisps are teetering indecisively there on the edge like acrophobic on a bungee platform.
I prod the machine. Nothing. I rattle the machine. My tea spills. I’m getting annoyed now, and interspersing my humming along with my player with threats.
“Gimme the crisps… Chocolate Salty Balls… Gimme them!”
No joy. I look at the machine. I figure, if I stick my hand into the slot, I might be able to wiggle...
Ow! It bites me. The drawer falls forward and nips my skin, giving me a long thin bruise. It looks like a lovebite from a tape worm. This is so not worth it. But it is. I need those crisps.
“Crisps. Criiiiiiiiiisps. Crispy crispy. Come to me...”
I figure, if I tilt the machine back a little, it should hold the door open so I don’t get injured again. If I can just get my hand into the slot...
Oh nuts. My sleeve is caught. Now I can’t get in or out without ripping my top. This is ridiculous.
“…suck on my… GIMME THE CRISPS… salty balls let my sleeve go and suck ‘em…”
Okay. If I kneel, and keep my hand level so the tea doesn’t spill, I can push the base of the machine to a tilt angle. Then I can move my shoulder right, which means the top should slide OFF the hook and then if I move left I should be able to get the crisps down. Then if I just give the machine a little push and a jerk, I should be able...
So, to summate, I am crouching underneath a teetering snack machine, with an overflowing cup of tea in one hand and the other firmly stuck in the machine itself, looking like I have a bathroom accident as I alternate between cursing, cajoling and singing about my chocolate salty balls...
...and that's when I realise that my boss is standing behind me.
Never. Again.
And this time, I mean it.
Sadhbh Warren is an MX reader who has since moved jobs and now buys her crisps from the corner shop.
Drinking with friends until 4am always seems like a great idea at the time. Not so much the next day, and even less when you have to work.
So, what’s good for exhaustion and hangovers? Caffeine’s always good. Unfortunately, the killer hangover means coffee is not an option. The mere thought of it makes me feel sick.
So, I decide I can probably handle a cup of tea. Tea has anti-toxidants or anti-oxidents or something. I'm unsure which, but I am figuring that it will either kill the toxic stuff (good) or the oxygen in my system (bad, but at least I'll be too dead to be hungover).
Picking up my MP3 player, I head to the kitchen to make myself a nice cuppa. Humming along happily, I realize that my player has hit the South Park bit, and Chef is starting his thing.
Oh, I love Chocolate Salty Balls. I start singing along with music on my headphones.
One cup of tea is made, and due to my total lack of depth perception (always tricky when you are hungover) I fill it far too full. I’m feeling peckish and decide to head over to the snack machine to get a nice bag of cheese and onion crisps.
Darn, I have nowhere to put my tea down. It keeps spilling burning liquid over my hand and soaking my trousers. Well, the quicker I get the crisps...
I put the cash in the machine and hit buttons and the spin-y thing spins and ... oh dear. It hasn’t gone quite far enough. The bloody crisps are teetering indecisively there on the edge like acrophobic on a bungee platform.
I prod the machine. Nothing. I rattle the machine. My tea spills. I’m getting annoyed now, and interspersing my humming along with my player with threats.
“Gimme the crisps… Chocolate Salty Balls… Gimme them!”
No joy. I look at the machine. I figure, if I stick my hand into the slot, I might be able to wiggle...
Ow! It bites me. The drawer falls forward and nips my skin, giving me a long thin bruise. It looks like a lovebite from a tape worm. This is so not worth it. But it is. I need those crisps.
“Crisps. Criiiiiiiiiisps. Crispy crispy. Come to me...”
I figure, if I tilt the machine back a little, it should hold the door open so I don’t get injured again. If I can just get my hand into the slot...
Oh nuts. My sleeve is caught. Now I can’t get in or out without ripping my top. This is ridiculous.
“…suck on my… GIMME THE CRISPS… salty balls let my sleeve go and suck ‘em…”
Okay. If I kneel, and keep my hand level so the tea doesn’t spill, I can push the base of the machine to a tilt angle. Then I can move my shoulder right, which means the top should slide OFF the hook and then if I move left I should be able to get the crisps down. Then if I just give the machine a little push and a jerk, I should be able...
So, to summate, I am crouching underneath a teetering snack machine, with an overflowing cup of tea in one hand and the other firmly stuck in the machine itself, looking like I have a bathroom accident as I alternate between cursing, cajoling and singing about my chocolate salty balls...
...and that's when I realise that my boss is standing behind me.
Never. Again.
And this time, I mean it.
Sadhbh Warren is an MX reader who has since moved jobs and now buys her crisps from the corner shop.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Is £200 enough to travel like Richard Branson for year?
Speaking as someone with travelling ambition of Richard Branson but the budget of a ham sandwich, Simonseeks.com is a really good travel resource; real people write real reviews of places and activities and then earn cash if people take them up on their suggestions.
What makes it good is that it has a more exciting and budget approach to visiting places from people who visited the cities, rather than the usual “this hotel let me sray free for a review and I liked it”. If you are planning a trip, I’d recommend researching it here. It’s particularly good for city breaks and for finding points of interest in places that are a little further off the well trodden tracks advised in the guidebooks.
My recent offering to them was a budget guide to romancing in Sydney. And they liked it so much that it won a prize. A prize of two hundred dollars sterling. Which may not allow me to fly RockStar class with Virgin Atlantic or purchase my own Virgin Island, but will allow me to take up some of my own cheap date suggestions.
Curious what they are? Have a look below...
For many couples, Sydney is the highlight of a round-the-world trip, but it can sometimes feel more arduous than amorous. Shared dorms and penny-pinching can take the shine off your shared adventure. However, the Harbour City doesn’t have to be Heartbreak City - here are a few ideas that will tug on the heartstrings instead of the wallet.
A romantic cruise for under $20
A luxury dinner and lie-down movie for under $60
A night in a mountain retreat for under $200
What makes it good is that it has a more exciting and budget approach to visiting places from people who visited the cities, rather than the usual “this hotel let me sray free for a review and I liked it”. If you are planning a trip, I’d recommend researching it here. It’s particularly good for city breaks and for finding points of interest in places that are a little further off the well trodden tracks advised in the guidebooks.
My recent offering to them was a budget guide to romancing in Sydney. And they liked it so much that it won a prize. A prize of two hundred dollars sterling. Which may not allow me to fly RockStar class with Virgin Atlantic or purchase my own Virgin Island, but will allow me to take up some of my own cheap date suggestions.
Curious what they are? Have a look below...
For many couples, Sydney is the highlight of a round-the-world trip, but it can sometimes feel more arduous than amorous. Shared dorms and penny-pinching can take the shine off your shared adventure. However, the Harbour City doesn’t have to be Heartbreak City - here are a few ideas that will tug on the heartstrings instead of the wallet.
A romantic cruise for under $20
A luxury dinner and lie-down movie for under $60
A night in a mountain retreat for under $200
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
A sunburnt country
My first thought today when I woke up in Sydney was “I slept in, I’m late”.
My second was “oh, and the apocalypse is here”.
There was an enormous dust storm last night and Sydney was blanketed in a thick red cloud of dust. It’s faded to a sullen yellow glow now, but at seven this morning the rising suns rays hitting the dust obliquely turned the city amber and red, like all the city was the outback glowing in the dawn. There are some great shots of it here.
The million dollar views of Darling Harbour look out now on an outback dust-storm. Exasperated staff sweep tracks of red dirt from the floor and furnishings of shops and restaurants. Billboards look sepia through the fog, like relics of another time and place. The cars in the city are coated in grime, the corner offices of the financial district smeared with a film of dust.
You forget how big, how dry this country is. You forget most of the cities cling to the sea, cowering away from the vast hot red and yellow plains of the centre. We live in our lovely lush Harbour City, and we catch the ferries across the bay and picnic in the big green parks and pour clean water in abundance into our glasses and our gardens and our pools and forget just how dry Australia is.
I grew up in Ireland, the Emerald Isle. A place so green that my Australian boyfriend commented when he saw it it looked hallucinogenic. An island of mild weather, of drizzle and fog and gentle spring rains making the landscape lush. Ireland is, for all the damp, very beautiful. I have always thought so.
It’s odd then that this morning’s choking dust reminds me of a very famous Australian poem – My Country by Dorothea Mackellar. “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.”
I’ve worked inland. At the tail end of a seven year drought, I worked a few hundred miles from the coast in New South Wales; where the dry earth cracks like crazy paving and there is nothing but dead grass in the fields. I worked with a farmer who had sold all his stock but the last two of his cattle, crushed by the relentless drought and the cost of feeding them. We were told to take a minute’s shower; any more and we could drain the rain water tank and it was a long drive to refill if we need to get the expensive additional water.
I’ve spoken to families clinging to hang on to their homes, when the rain has failed for the seventh year running, and vets who moved away from their lifelong jobs when the last of the lifestock in the area had gone. Living in the Australian outback is not easy.
But, in its severe way, it is beautiful. Just after dawn the early morning changes from the chill of the cloudless night to the soaring heat of the day, the wind carrying the scent of eucalyptus in the air and dust kicked up by every step. The sunsets are amazing; the red dust reflecting a thousand vibrant shades of blue and purple and pink, the earth radiating heat as the gorged red sun sinks below the horizon.
And that, that is a few hundred miles in. It’s not even close to the baking heart of this country, where the red sand stretches for thousands of miles, where countless explorers vanished for all eternity and an empty gas tank and a water tank could be a death sentence.
Today everyone in Sydney, no matter how much they have pay to insulate and distance themselves from the Australian outback, has had it come to them. At the beginning of the summer, Sydney has thrown us a glowing outback dawn.
Other people may grimace and grizzle about how much it will cost to clean the windows, the floor, the carpets. But to me today’s red and dusty dawn is a reminder of the stark beauty of the Australian landscape, and that is has been too long since I’ve seen it.
My second was “oh, and the apocalypse is here”.
There was an enormous dust storm last night and Sydney was blanketed in a thick red cloud of dust. It’s faded to a sullen yellow glow now, but at seven this morning the rising suns rays hitting the dust obliquely turned the city amber and red, like all the city was the outback glowing in the dawn. There are some great shots of it here.
The million dollar views of Darling Harbour look out now on an outback dust-storm. Exasperated staff sweep tracks of red dirt from the floor and furnishings of shops and restaurants. Billboards look sepia through the fog, like relics of another time and place. The cars in the city are coated in grime, the corner offices of the financial district smeared with a film of dust.
You forget how big, how dry this country is. You forget most of the cities cling to the sea, cowering away from the vast hot red and yellow plains of the centre. We live in our lovely lush Harbour City, and we catch the ferries across the bay and picnic in the big green parks and pour clean water in abundance into our glasses and our gardens and our pools and forget just how dry Australia is.
I grew up in Ireland, the Emerald Isle. A place so green that my Australian boyfriend commented when he saw it it looked hallucinogenic. An island of mild weather, of drizzle and fog and gentle spring rains making the landscape lush. Ireland is, for all the damp, very beautiful. I have always thought so.
It’s odd then that this morning’s choking dust reminds me of a very famous Australian poem – My Country by Dorothea Mackellar. “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.”
I’ve worked inland. At the tail end of a seven year drought, I worked a few hundred miles from the coast in New South Wales; where the dry earth cracks like crazy paving and there is nothing but dead grass in the fields. I worked with a farmer who had sold all his stock but the last two of his cattle, crushed by the relentless drought and the cost of feeding them. We were told to take a minute’s shower; any more and we could drain the rain water tank and it was a long drive to refill if we need to get the expensive additional water.
I’ve spoken to families clinging to hang on to their homes, when the rain has failed for the seventh year running, and vets who moved away from their lifelong jobs when the last of the lifestock in the area had gone. Living in the Australian outback is not easy.
But, in its severe way, it is beautiful. Just after dawn the early morning changes from the chill of the cloudless night to the soaring heat of the day, the wind carrying the scent of eucalyptus in the air and dust kicked up by every step. The sunsets are amazing; the red dust reflecting a thousand vibrant shades of blue and purple and pink, the earth radiating heat as the gorged red sun sinks below the horizon.
And that, that is a few hundred miles in. It’s not even close to the baking heart of this country, where the red sand stretches for thousands of miles, where countless explorers vanished for all eternity and an empty gas tank and a water tank could be a death sentence.
Today everyone in Sydney, no matter how much they have pay to insulate and distance themselves from the Australian outback, has had it come to them. At the beginning of the summer, Sydney has thrown us a glowing outback dawn.
Other people may grimace and grizzle about how much it will cost to clean the windows, the floor, the carpets. But to me today’s red and dusty dawn is a reminder of the stark beauty of the Australian landscape, and that is has been too long since I’ve seen it.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Published in MX today - Losing weight and your sanity, a step-by-step approach
Summer is coming, and I’m not ready. I thought I was in shape but according to a fitness assessment at the gym, that shape is a Stop-sign – stationary, large and bright red.
I knew I should have got fitter before I went to the gym to get checked out. It’s like cleaning before the cleaners come; it doesn’t make sense but it’s a bit less embarrassing.
So today I plan to start stage fourteen of the get fit for Summer plan.
Stage one is persuading yourself it’s all hormonal and seasonal fat.
Christmas dinner, Easter eggs, cold weather, water-retention, the running of the tides - all these are better explanations for why your fattest Fat Pants are gaping at the seams.
Not that you ate too much and stayed on the sofa for the last three months.
Or that you have been stuffing your face with chocolate and counting walks to the Thai place across the road as exercise, oh no. It’s not your fault; it’s winter weight!
The first bit of Stage two is asking your partner or friend if you have put on a little weight.
The second bit is accusing them of being shallow and heartless when they say that you have put on a little, but doesn’t everyone over winter and maybe you should get fit together?
Stage three involves locking yourself in the bathroom while crying and eating more chocolate. And then storming out to throw cleaning implements at your partner, shouting if they like skinny things so much they can go out with the mop.
Here’s also where you hurl allegations that they would rather be seeing skinnier people. Such as their ex, their co-workers, your co-workers, their friends, your ex, their family, their mother, random strangers on the street, the stoned guy who staffs the graveyard shift at the 7-11 and anyone who is currently less porky than you.
Stage four involves apologising. A lot. Also picking up the things you threw.
Stage five involves drowning the pain in alcohol. A lot.
Stage six is hungover.
Stage seven involves actually doing something about things and attempting to go to the gym occasionally, while still eating all that chocolate.
Stage eight is being too busy to do the gym but deciding that switching to low fat milk cancels out the chocolate.
Stage nine is giving up on the gym as it’s not working.
Stage ten is realising that you might need to do more than one gym session a week.
Stages eleven through to thirteen repeat stages two to four. This time you pretend the throwing stuff at your partner and cleaning it up counts as a workout.
And stage fourteen involves biting the bullet and actually genuinely trying to get into a healthier routine. Wish me luck. Or send chocolate.
Sadhbh Warren is an MX reader who is off to the gym any day now.
I knew I should have got fitter before I went to the gym to get checked out. It’s like cleaning before the cleaners come; it doesn’t make sense but it’s a bit less embarrassing.
So today I plan to start stage fourteen of the get fit for Summer plan.
Stage one is persuading yourself it’s all hormonal and seasonal fat.
Christmas dinner, Easter eggs, cold weather, water-retention, the running of the tides - all these are better explanations for why your fattest Fat Pants are gaping at the seams.
Not that you ate too much and stayed on the sofa for the last three months.
Or that you have been stuffing your face with chocolate and counting walks to the Thai place across the road as exercise, oh no. It’s not your fault; it’s winter weight!
The first bit of Stage two is asking your partner or friend if you have put on a little weight.
The second bit is accusing them of being shallow and heartless when they say that you have put on a little, but doesn’t everyone over winter and maybe you should get fit together?
Stage three involves locking yourself in the bathroom while crying and eating more chocolate. And then storming out to throw cleaning implements at your partner, shouting if they like skinny things so much they can go out with the mop.
Here’s also where you hurl allegations that they would rather be seeing skinnier people. Such as their ex, their co-workers, your co-workers, their friends, your ex, their family, their mother, random strangers on the street, the stoned guy who staffs the graveyard shift at the 7-11 and anyone who is currently less porky than you.
Stage four involves apologising. A lot. Also picking up the things you threw.
Stage five involves drowning the pain in alcohol. A lot.
Stage six is hungover.
Stage seven involves actually doing something about things and attempting to go to the gym occasionally, while still eating all that chocolate.
Stage eight is being too busy to do the gym but deciding that switching to low fat milk cancels out the chocolate.
Stage nine is giving up on the gym as it’s not working.
Stage ten is realising that you might need to do more than one gym session a week.
Stages eleven through to thirteen repeat stages two to four. This time you pretend the throwing stuff at your partner and cleaning it up counts as a workout.
And stage fourteen involves biting the bullet and actually genuinely trying to get into a healthier routine. Wish me luck. Or send chocolate.
Sadhbh Warren is an MX reader who is off to the gym any day now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
