Cocktails and Records

Last week, thanks to some work colleagues, I had a nasty flashback to my youth. Back, back I went to the dark, dingey dive that constituted the one nightclub in our country town. Think painted up young women dancing around handbags, blokes leering over lager, blaringly distorted top 40 music, couples snogging in darkened corners, people passing out on sticky floors by 10pm and 2-for-1 offers on the sort of cocktails where you go straight from a sugar high to feeling strangely queasy as soon as you stand up, and you’ll know the sort of place I mean.

If I was being cruel I might describe this as a typical Australian night out for people of a certain age. It was definitely something I hadn’t experienced in quite some time.

So it was with bemusement that I witnessed this same scenario taking place again just last week. This time the location was a  dark, dingey bar in the City of London (known as ‘the financial centre of the world’ until last year), and my town’s shop girls and army jerks were replaced by corporate lawyers and management accountants. And as I sipped on my 2-for-1 Pina Colada, which tasted more like sugar than rum, and watched my 19 year old colleague get her bum pinched to Beyonce whilst a man did ‘amusing’ things with his tie, I reflected on the universality of horrible bars and nightclubs.

Mostly, however, I was snobbishly greatful that I now knew that there was life beyond drinking Sex on the Beaches and Slow Comfortable Screws to bad over-loud music.

The next evening, safely installed at home, I made us our own garish pink cocktails (but ones which actually tasted like alcohol), switched on Frank Sinatra (at a reasonable volume), got out the olives and sighed contentedly. Like Five-Centres says, it’s called ‘getting older’.

The Pink Lady

1/4 oz lemon juice
1 egg white
1 -2 dashes of grenadine
1 1/2 oz gin

Shake well over ice cubes in a shaker.
Strain into glass and enjoy.

I was trying to look busy while waiting for a work thing to start last week, and found myself pouring over those pages in my diary that list international public holidays. As you do.

I wonder if that nasty rumour that Australia has more long weekends than any other country is true I asked myself?

No, is the short answer.

Here is the public holiday tally for some random countries:

Australia – 9
Brazil – 14
Canada – 11
Czech Republic – 13
Italy – 12
France – 12
Japan – 15
South Africa – 13
South Korea – 13
UK – 9
US – 10

So I think that we can all agree that, quite frankly, both the UK and Australia are hard done by when it comes to bank holidays* and could do with some more. Perhaps an annual ‘Snow Day’ or ‘Get Drunk in the Park Day’ would be appropriate. Any other ideas?

In the short term, we could all just get jobs at the Australian High Commission in London and Edinburgh. Here the staff enjoy public holidays from both countries (including Canberra Day for heavens sakes – why not take Melbourne Cup Day as well while you’re at it folks!).

Pfttt…

*To be fair though, I have to point out that  at least Australia and Britain have vaguely generous annual leave allowances – unlike say, stingey old Japan and the US.

Today is Australia Day (or ‘Invasion Day’ depending on what side of the political fence you’re sitting). It is the day that Australians celebrate the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and the country being taken into the warm bosom of the British Empire.

In Australia it’s a public holiday, and in the UK it provides an excuse for particular types of pubs to offer promotions on Fosters lager. But essentially, Australia Day is one of those days where I don’t know what to do or even what I’m meant to do, regardless of whether I agree with the sentiment or not.

We always celebrate Burns Night in our household because even if it’s just eating haggis and cracking open the whisky, we know what we’re supposed to do. Similarly, ANZAC Day, Remembrance Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and even Guy Fawkes Night have their own set of easy to follow rituals and prescribed emotions. I know more about what I should do on Hannukah than on Australia Day. 

So it goes largely uncelebrated round our way.  Perhaps I should invent something for us to do – probably involving beer, lamingtons, fireworks, cricket and overuse of the word ‘mate’… sigh…

It is almost 9 years since I first arrived on these shores.  In that time I have adapted relatively easily to life in the UK – my youthful addictions to Ladybird books and Enid Blyton, The Goodies and The Good Life, Number One and the NME prepared me well for all that Britain had to throw at me.

But there are still some things that I truly do not like or understand about this country.

1. The total absence of powerpoints from British bathrooms. I thought that Australia was a health and safety obsessed nanny state when it came to these things, but why British Building Regulations  assume that people will automatically use their hair dryers while in the shower if there is a powerpoint in the bathroom is beyond me.
2. The general propensity to wash up in a bucket in the sink, rather than in the sink itself. Why??!!
3. Voting on Thursdays. If you want to increase voter turn out, then switch election day to Saturday. This frees more people up for both voting and campaigning, and as an added bonus you can stay up all night watching the results without fear of having to go to work with a hangover and two hours sleep the next day.
4. People complaining about the weather. I don’t mind people talking about the weather – it is something that affects us all and is a very convenient tool for small talk afterall.  But it’s not that bad. There are few hurricanes, tsunamis, bushfires, earthquakes or randomly erupting volcanoes; you don’t have to sleep rolled up in towels because it’s so humid you sweat lying still;  it isn’t completely dark for several months of the year; the seasons don’t blend into one constant mush of mildness; you don’t risk skin cancer everytime you leave the house without Factor 36 sunscreen on etc. etc. The weather is not that bad. And it is not a good enough reason alone to immigrate. 
5. The combination of Daily Mail winge culture and British net migration out of the country. It is socially acceptable amongst a large proportion of the population to moan about ‘PC gone mad’ and ‘floods of immigrants destroying traditional culture’ whilst at the same time unironically eyeing up house prices in France and Spain. Drives me mad.

That’s enough for one week. Feel free to defend or just explain. Please.

I don’t particularly like ITV’s celebrity reality show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!. This is for a number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with me being hugely adverse to ‘reality’ formats – I’d be the first to admit that I’ve had my moments of serious addiction to Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, Wife Swap, Faking It, The X Factor, Pop Idol et. al. (and thankfully, I’ve been able  to successfully recover from all of them).

I’m a Celebrity has always irked me though.

Allow me to come over all po-faced for a moment, but Australia and Australian wildlife really doesn’t deserve to be associated with useless B grade celebrities.

The centrepiece of I’m a Celebrity is the bush tucker trials where viewers vote to submit the celebrity kicking-bag of the moment to torture via native animals. So we have celebrities wading through swarming angry insects, eating live wriggly worms and being covered in curious creeping beetles. Of course, we’re meant to laugh at the hapless celebrity, but I’m guessing that the animals don’t particularly like it either.

Obviously I didn’t grow up in a rainforest (or an ITV jungle filmset in Queensland for that matter), but I did spend my formative years in a typical Australian country town. At school, on TV and in first-aid classes we learnt about our country’s insects and animals, including some of the nastier ones. We discovered how they sustain an fascinating and distinctive eco-system, how they’ve provided a food source for Aboriginal people for thousands of years and exactly what to do when a box jelly fish decides to attack you.

There is a peculiar populist British media view of Australia as a land of non-stop sunshine, where blonde-haired, BBQ loving, lager drinkers constantly risk being eaten by sharks and crocodiles as they go swimming during their lunchbreaks. And with its portrayal of Australia’s wildlife as something to gleefully torture celebrities with, I’m a Celebrity isn’t really doing much to help the cause.

Yes, Australia does have lots of creepy crawlies, but apart from a few notable exceptions, they do mostly keep to themselves and are a vital part of what makes the country unique. They deserve better than being eaten by Robert Kilroy-Silk.

As much as I love this country, I have to admit that Britain has let me down on occasion. One of the things I’ve found particularly disappointing is the quite frankly boring ideas that pass for pop compilation titles and covers. I know they do as it says on the tin, but Now That’s What I Call Music 1 – eternity, Top of the Pops, The Hits, Hits, Hits Scene etc. etc. just don’t cut it.

Let me show you how it’s done, Australian style, with some favourites from my personal collection.

Ripper ‘76

This was the second in a series of Ripper albums on Polystar with similarly themed covers. I think we can guess why these might have been popular…

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Howzat – Sherbert
2. Right Back Where we Started From – Maxine Nightingale
3. Late Last Night – Split Enz
4. I Like It Both Ways – Supernaut
5. Convoy – C.W. McCall

Bullseye

Another Polystar favourite, this time from 1979, containing some corking tracks – none of which are even remotely related to darts.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Hot Summer Nights – Night
2. Let’s Go – The Cars
3. Get Used It – Roger Voudouris
4. Halfway Hotel – Voyager
5. Are ‘Friends’ Electric – Tubeway Army
6. He’s the Greatest Dancer – Sister Sledge
7. Sunburn – Graham Gouldman

Bacon and Eggs: The Album

Similarly, if there is any correlation between the songs below and fried breakfasts, I’ve yet to find it.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Knock on Wood – Amii Stewart
2. Chiquitita – ABBA
3. Shooting Star – Dollar
4. Lost in Love – Air Supply
5. On the Inside – Lynne Hamilton

Thru the Roof ‘83

This was one of the first records I ever bought with my own money. It was pink, had a top song about skipping and a strangely feminine sounding bloke on it called Mike Oldfield singing a song about a shadow – perfect for an 8 year old.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Moonlight Shadow – Mike Oldfield
2. Maxine – Sharon O’Neill
3. Double Dutch – Malcolm McLaren
4. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’- Michael Jackson

1984 Shakin’

This mid-80s crayon cover art belies a great album of Australian pop gems (and Cliff Richard).

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Pseudo Echo – Listening
2. Daryl Hall & John Oates – Say It Isn’t So
3. Kids in the Kitchen – Change in Mood
4. Pat Benatar – Love is a Battlefield
5. QED  – Everywhere I go
6. Hoodoo Gurus – My Girl

With thanks to the K-Tel blog for the images

When I was a child, I used to love the Last Night of the Proms. I found the combination of music, cheery flag waving, dinner suits and silly hats, all in the beautiful surrounds of the Royal Albert Hall, a heady combination. To my young eyes, it was like watching a surreal ‘foreign’ world full of happy people singing (the sort of people who had probably grown up in thatched roof cottages and had regularly enjoyed boarding school midnight feasts). It had a magical allure and I was glued to the TV every time it was on.

A few years ago I actually managed to get tickets for the same event through a friend. The first half was ace. For one, you’re in the Royal Albert Hall which is always a delight and the performances that night were fabulous – Andreas Scholl singing Handel and Purcell and John Williams playing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

But then came the second half. Although I knew to expect all the usual patriotic tunes, I didn’t quite anticipate the impact of them. At first I soaked up the emotion of the atmosphere with contented amusement. However, as the evening wore on and everyone else was carried away on a tide of patriotic fervour, bemusement turned to bewilderment. What looked like harmless fun on TV, felt creepy and curiously un-British in real life.

I found myself quite frankly unnerved by the serious faces of my fellow prommers as they gustily sung along to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance i.e. Land of Hope and Glory and positively squeamed my way through Rule Britannia. By the time we got to the national anthem all my love for this country (and my own parentage) had evaporated and been replaced by a strange overwhelming desire to wave an Australian flag around, one with the Union Jack ripped out, and shout republican slogans. Patriotism is a funny thing.

I didn’t watch it this year.

Whilst away on holidays I managed to actually read some books. This is a bit of a novelty for me.

So it’s equally a novelty to rave about a book here, but “Socialism is Great!”: A Workers Memoir of the New China by Lijia Zhang truly is great. Lijia Zhang now writes for newspapers like the Independent, Japan Times and South China Morning Post, but she spent her early life in the late 70s and 80s working in a government missile factory in Nanjing, China.

The way she describes her struggle to escape the dictorial demands of the factory and its endless political propaganda meetings, factory singing competitions (featuring catchy tunes called ‘Socialism is Great’), boring, unchallenging work and general prying into her life (’period police’ checking that female staff weren’t flouting Chinese pregnancy ‘guidelines’) is absolutely fascinating.

In her life there is no concept of privacy – people routinely spy on their colleagues and neighbours, frustrated unmarried couples are reported to the police for fooling about in the park, their careers and social standing subsequently destroyed, and toilet stalls just don’t exist. Even worse, Lijia’s quest to educate herself, learn English and to do more with her life are constantly put down by those around her. It’s just not good to stand out from the crowd in 80s China.

The best way for me to get across this peek into what really is a very, very foreign world is to switch the scenario round. Here, Lijia describes not only eating Western food for the first time in the late 80s, but her first experience of the joys of the buffet:

On a long table covered with another brilliantly white cloth, the feast sat invitingly. I piled up my plate with roast beef, chicken legs, and prawns, ignoring salads and vegetables as I calculated they were cheap. On my way back to the seat, lured by cakes, I also balanced an apple pie and a big spoonful of chocolate moose on top of my overflowing plate.

She then goes on to struggle with knives and forks and to make a complete mess of the white table cloth.

It’s a flippant comparison considering the overall political tones of the book, but I love this description of someone encountering something as ’everyday’ as a Western buffet for the first time. It’s as delightfully foreign to her as wearing Mao suits is to me.

Ah, the Beijing Olympics are finally upon us. And considering my attitude to the Games (glorified sports day for weirdo sports) I’m taken back by how interested I am in the damn things this year… I think it’s the political side of things, the fact that China is considerably more interesting/contentious than Athens, Sydney or Atlanta could ever be. I am just dying to know how it will go and whether China will emerge from the end of Olympic juggernaut with the kudos it so desperately longs for.

What has really struck me so far is the complete lack of buzz in the UK about the core element of the Olympics – sport. There is little mention of sport, the hype is all around pollution and politics.

This is best exemplified by the fact that major news outlets (BBC news, Newsnight, Channel 4 news etc.) have had teams of reporters in Beijing all week updating us on protests, human rights, Tibet, censorship, pollution etc. but there is only minimal sports coverage planned for prime time. We get one hour of highlights each evening at 7pm on BBC1. They aren’t even showing a complete replay of the opening ceremony, the most expensive and most fretted about opening ceremony of all time.

In Australia, the Games would be clogging up the airwaves all night, every night across two channels. There would be no escape from relentless analysis about the swimming team’s swimsuits and the weightlifting team’s weight. But here, no one seems to particularly care.

God, I love this country.*

 
* Except when its airwaves are clogged with up European football tournaments that England and Scotland haven’t even qualified for.

What with being snowed under with work, it being miserable hayfever season and having bought way too much new music recently, I’ve been rather lax on the blogging front compared to usual.

But last night I saw ‘classic British film’ Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) and it has completely inspired me. I’d never seen Brief Encounter before and what a fantastic film it is! I was completely transfixed throughout.

The trusty film notes provided by BFI Southbank where I saw the film, tell me that Brief Encounter is ‘quintessentially British’ in its depiction of restraint. I really don’t understand this in the slightest. I know that the cliche says that ‘the British’ are the very epitome of restraint and are reserved and polite, stiff upper lip and all that (except on a hot day after a few pints of Stella), but really…?

I read the film, where two married people meet, fall in love and have a 4 week affair, as the classic struggle between individual desire and family obligation. Showing emotional restraint area in this area is hardly unique and particularly not in 1945. I was actually suprised that the couple were so unrestrained in seeing each other in public places – I’d constantly be terrified of being seen (as they indeed were).

No for me, the most moving (and British) thing about Brief Encounter was its combination of realism and romanticism. Two ordinary people, in ordinary relationships, doing ordinary things in an ordinary town suddenly find each other and fall in passionately in love. So I wasn’t struck by the infamous British ‘restraint’ but by the crushing reality of their boring lives and the fact that thousands and thousands of people have sat there watching this film since 1945 wishing to God that it could happen to them.