Cocktails and Records

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’s that time of the year again.

Well, it is according to the giant Christmas card which has appeared near my office this week. Seasons Greetings a jolly typeface declares to stressed office workers as we pass by, agape at the huge Christmas tree on its cover.

It is mid-September, isn’t it?

This must be a new record.

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.

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.

It doesn’t really need saying again, but I’m not a huge fan of the glorified school sports day that is the Olympics. However, despite this I still found myself managing to spend just over a week in the Olympic City that is Beijing. And let me tell you, Beijing is a city possessed by the Olympic spirit. Here are a few lessons for London to learn:

1. Build lots of new things

Bejing is one big construction site. If the rumour that 25% of the worlds cranes are currently in Dubai is true, then the rest are probably in Beijing. The Olympics seem to be facilitating an unprecedented rush on ripping down, restoring (sometimes) and building – highrise apartment blocks are being flung up within weeks, traditional hutong neighbourhoods reshaped and rebuilt, subways extended and landmark buildings regularly unfurled to the world. We met a Taiwanese-American guy on the train one day who said that he could see workmen in a new apartment block being built near the Olympic site welding at 3am on a Saturday night. I think we can be quite confident that that won’t happen in London.

2. Launch a TV channel dedicated soley to the Olympics

Chinese Central Television (CCTV) has dedicated its sport channel entirely to the Olympics, even renaming it ‘the Olympic channel’ for the duration of 2008. This is useful because if you should miss out on any vital Olympic news or highlights at home, you can watch them on your way to work on the subway – each carriage on the new subway line that we were near had TV screens broadcasting CCTV’s Olympic channel. Rhythmic gymnastic highlights from previous Olympics seemed to feature a lot, but what would appeal to Londoners? Darts?

3. There is nothing that cannot be merchandised

Official (and unofficial) Olympic shops are everywhere – the airport, every shopping mall, every department store, the Forbidden City etc. – selling everything you could possibly ever want. T-shirts, tea sets, ties, towels, chopsticks, kites, coins, stamps, collectable medals, piggy banks, car/airplane neck pillows, cosmetic bags… everything. No snow domes or big novelty pants though disappointly.

4. There is nowhere too famous or too UNESCO World Heritage listed to be branded

5. Maintain a strong uniformed presence at all times

There were a lot of offical looking uniformed people in Beijing. The first time we went to Tianamen Square they were either studiously marching about everywhere or attempting to blend in as by-standers. The last time we went to Tianamen Square was the day the Olympic torch rolled into town and we couldn’t get within a mile of the place. Police were stationed at every intersection, every potential public loitering place and every subway entrance to make sure that you knew that there would be no trouble.

If London Met. Police can pay as many fresh faced young men to stand around looking threatening as the city of Beijing can then I will be truly impressed… but then again we probably won’t need to…

We are going to a family wedding in a few weeks. Weddings are becoming more and more frustrating for me. This is not because I don’t wish the couples well or I resent helping re-equip the houses of people who’ve lived together for years and earn more than I do, but because at every wedding we attend, I and my ‘Significant Other’ are beleaguered by people asking us when we are going to tie the knot ourselves.

Weddings are quite possibly the least appropriate time to ask this question. For one, I never know how to respond appropriately. Do I brush the question aside (as I usually do) or just be honest and risk offending the asker?

I have been thinking that the time has come to be honest. It’s that or people continuing to ask the same question for the next 20 years. So I am going to throw caution to the wind, come out on this blog and rehearse my response.

Initial short answer:

‘We are not getting married because we don’t want to. We don’t really think that it’s right for us.’

Longer answer for more persistent, curious people:

‘We’ve decided not to get married for various reasons.

1. We don’t particularly feel that we need to have our relationship either recognised or validated by the state.
2. We are not religious so we don’t really need the church involved either.
3. The marriage ceremony is fundamentally sexist. If marriage is based on equality, then why is the actual ceremony full of old-fashioned traditions like the couple being pronounced ‘man and wife’? Why is it still traditional for the father to hand over his daughter to her husband to be? Why does society only ‘permit’ a woman to ask a man to marry her on one day in every four years?
4. The high divorce rate makes a mockery of marriage. We can’t understand how a piece of paper and a public declaration of love make someone else’s relationship any more secure than ours.
5. Marriage for us is not a romantic concept at all. It’s an economic transaction and it always has been. Why dress it up as anything else? [Sadly this last point will probably get us in the end if anything does. The one real reason to get married, particularly since we don't want children, is tax benefits.]

Defensive, angsty answer for after I’ve had a few drinks:

‘We just don’t want to get married ok. Why are you even asking – why did you get married? Do you honestly think that I would want to dress up like a pavlova anyway?’

Somehow I don’t think that Grandma is going to respond well to any of these…

Here’s a confession for you: I’ve never really bought into the idea of the Olympics. Although I’ve consistently failed to understand the point of competitive sport throughout my life, it probably all started in 1984 when I realised that Misha, the cute mascot bear of the Russian Games in 1980, hadn’t made it to LA.

Since then it’s been steadily downhill for me and the Olympics, but as a former resident of Sydney (leading up to the 2000 Games) and current rate-payer in London, I’ve adapted and learnt to live with my Olympic friend who keeps following me around. I know that most people disagree with my opinions and I’ve learnt to keep my mouth shut and not use the phrases ‘Olympic games’, ‘obscene waste of money’ and ‘we’ll still be paying for this in 50 years’ together if I want an easy life.

However, I think I’m actually beginning to feel sorry for the Olympics. To use market research speak, if the Olympics was a person he, Mr Olympics, would probably be one of the good guys. He just wants people from around the world to get together and play some sport. He’s even willing to let people who do synchronised swimming and beach volleyball pretend that they’re playing a real sport.

In fact, Mr Olympics is so nice that everyone wants a piece of him. He’s become the kind of corporate brand that everyone wants in on – even other fundamentally ‘good’ concepts like the arts, culture, regeneration, sustainability and social inclusion are trying to elbow their way in under his umbrella. And that’s why I’m starting to feel some empathy.

The Olympics in London is going to be very busy. When its not transforming and ‘regenerating’ East London it will, through the guise of the Cultural Olympiad, be showcasing Britain’s artistic talent. The Cultural Olympiad is, according to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, a ‘four-year period of cultural activity designed to celebrate the Olympic spirit throughout the UK’ and will ‘inspire people around the country to participate in a range of cultural activities, which will reflect and celebrate the diverse communities which make up London and the UK.‘ All very laudable, but why? How can what is essentially a glorified sports day possibly deliver anything for the arts? And why should it?

I suspect that since the government and organising committee, LOCOG, have so far failed to put aside any actual money for the Cultural Olympiad that someone somewhere has already decided. It can’t work and if it does, well it’s not a priority. And they’re right, the arts shouldn’t be a priority in the Olympics, the Games are about sport – that is the core brand, nothing else. Just don’t expect me to get excited about it.

Me and Christmas don’t get along very well:

1. It thinks it’s a Christian celebration. I’m not a Christian and think they stole it off the pagans anyway.
2. It thinks it’s a time for families to come together. I think it’s a sad society that needs an excuse to do this – what’s wrong with the rest of the year?
3. It thinks that giving one another gifts is a sign of love and appreciation. I think that if showing your love means giving your nearest and dearest a copy of today’s Amazon Christmas gift recommendation How to Fossilise Your Hamster: And 99 Other Experiments to Try at Home then you’re in trouble.

However, for the sake of harmony, I’m trying to offer an olive branch to Christmas.

For one, I am entering into the festive spirit by consuming lots of stilton and port.

But try as I might, boy is Christmas is annoying me today:
.

1. The streets are clogged with harassed and stressed shoppers getting in the way of me buying ordinary things like milk and newspapers.
2. Royal Mail managed to deliver the Christmas card I sent second class to the designers I work with before the slightly more important proofs which I sent first class a day earlier.
3. The banks festive tinsel fell on my head when I visited my local branch at lunchtime.

Has Christmas seen through my pretence, cottoned on to my true feelings for it and is now beginning to plot against me?

It is Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes night tonight, whatever you want to call it.

Rather than be out celebrating with our neighbours who are busy scaring the hell out of the local cats right now, I am safely in front of computer, trying to drown them out with the sound of typing and the soundtrack to Carousel.

Because I, [deep breath, confession coming] loathe fireworks. Actually, make that despise fireworks.

I just don’t see the point.

People who defend fireworks say that it’s just another form of entertainment. Maybe, but they hardly compare to movies, music, good conversation or even playing board games do they? Describing fireworks as either entertainment or art is kind of insulting to real artists and musicians.

Unless you’re a 5 year old and it’s a whole new experience for you, the elephant in the room with fireworks is that they are all much the same. They’re not all that good are they, particularly the stuff you can buy yourself from the shop? Come on admit it! Seen one rocket or roman candle, seen them all!

When it’s publicly funded fireworks it’s even worse. People rave about the fireworks displays put on at celebrations. People in Sydney brag, for example, about the super spot they were lucky enough to snare to watch one of the city’s many tiresome and expensive fireworks displays. But really, they may as well just go and watch someone setting fire to banknotes for all the fun and good it is.

For that is what fireworks are. Not just bread and circuses, but the sound of people pointlessly burning wads of cash for a cheap and boring 5 minute thrill.

And, yes, before anyone points it out I know that fireworks are an important cultural and historical aspect of loads of different cultures and I know that I have absolutely no sense of fun, but I don’t care!