Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 28 2004


HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW


HERE it is then, the final column. After almost 20 years as editor of Messenger, I am off. To Tasmania. Green fields. New challenges. Must rush. It gets late early in this place. In old graveyards, you can feel the presence of the dead through the words on their headstones. My memorials, I expect, will be the columns I have been privileged to write for the past decade or so. Thanks. The world needs people who niggle other people out of their comfort zones and, it seemed to me as a young man starting out, journalism offered a platform to air contrary views. Torn between intense individualism and a desire to "fit in", a career in journalism beckoned. I have since done some niggling of my own, growing old disrespectfully. I liked the fact that journalism had its own code of ethics, something in which to wrap myself self-righteously. I liked the concept of an integrity undiluted by having to make compromises. Uh-huh. I soon came into contact with people who wished me to make many ethical compromises. There was almost nothing they would not do for money or power. I like to think I fended off the temptations. Touch wood. I could never be a government press secretary or go into public relations. I have too great an impulse to speak my mind loudly and recklessly. I have appropriate and inappropriate voices and one very quickly becomes the other. I have problems with authority figures. My disruptive behaviour in front of the high and mighty is almost compulsive. I make people wary; I attract disapproval; and I have often been spurned for thinking out loud. I so dislike being in anyone's debt - even owing a favour - that I frequently behave badly if someone tries to do me a good turn. Sorry. I have needed to learn restraint, to keep some judgements silent. Total truth is not always defensible when others are unnecessarily hurt. Sorry again. All the same, faced with injustice, corruption and racism, some things need to be spoken out loud otherwise silence has the same effect as consent. Prejudice can overwhelm reason and ignorance can overwhelm knowledge. Be vigilant. Even a government can think you guilty based on your appearance. I have been fortunate to have a newspaper column to call my own for so long, and to hear people say they agree with me, or even disagree and that I therefore should burn in hellfire. Whatever I have written has two lives: What I think about as I write and what people think when they read it. What it means for them is not always what it means for me. No apologies. Whatever, thanks for humouring me and thank me for having you. (Des Ryan is the new editor of The Advocate, Burnie.)


Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 21 2004


LINDSAY FOX AND ME, TRUCKING


WITH rare exceptions, watching TV is like staring into a toilet bowl. The news services are filled with one stinking mess after another and "reality" shows have much the same seamy appeal as wildlife documentaries - all gluttony, sex and violence. After a while it induces a world-weary, cynical air and I am not really like that. So I can see the attraction of instead watching something light and fluffy like cooking shows or Australian Idol, a TV talent contest of very mixed talents. Idol proves that equal opportunity does not produce equal achievement. Talents are not shared around equally. Not everyone on the show sings well. It might take some practice but eventually the person who sings best wins. I lack the necessary talent and pizzaz, unfortunately, otherwise I might easily have gone into showbiz. The only alternative left now is for someone who looks or sounds like me to become a movie star or a fabulous singer so then I can become rich impersonating them. Singing, by itself, is already difficult enough so I am always impressed by people who can make themselves sound exactly like other famous singers. Tom Burlinson does a great Frank Sinatra, for example, and Todd McKenney does an impressive Peter Allen, as does Hugh Jackman. We might be ruled by governments of mediocracy in this country but we do produce some superb mimics. Even our birds are great at it. Actors Nicole Kidman and Eric Bana can do terrific American accents. It possibly has something to do with the Aussie blotting paper monotone being able to soak up whatever is heard. Yet very few American actors can do a convincing Australian accent. Meryl Streep's is dreadful. I need to find the right impersonation and then seek a gig with the promoter Mario Maiolo, who stages those Christmas cabarets featuring Rod Stewart and Tina Turner lookalikes and ABBA cover bands. But who to impersonate, that's the problem? The standup comic Gerry Connolly, impersonating the Queen in spangled gown and tiara at the time, once called me Lindsay Fox, the bald, fat trucking magnate, which caused much hilarity in the audience. Mutter. Or there is always an opening for another Elvis. By 2010, it is estimated half the US population will be Elvis impersonators. This morning I was in the toilet searching for the perfect echo, rehearsing "Crying in the chapel", and when I leaned over to lower the seat, my Elvis sunnies fell into the bowl. Oh, for crying out loud! Another good act gone down the toilet. Which leaves me back with Lindsay Fox. He certainly offers me the ingredients for an impersonation - wealthy, successful and strikingly handsome - and, best of all, I could do him without having to frock up. Eat your heart out, Gerry Connolly.


Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 14 2004


A WEIGHT FOR EVERY WEAKLING


FEELING unusually flat, my sister Jennifer went to see a naturopath to have her spirits revved up. I do not know why Jen, a nurse, has now decided alternative medicine is a better option than all her medical training. Then again, she puts shredded carrot in her hamburger mince and has always been a bit of an empathiser.
"How are you?" she asks. "Okay, thanks," I answer honestly. "You sure? Are you okay, y'know, really okay?" she says, touching my shoulder, her voice fluttery with concern. Do spare me, Jen. She said the naturopath had attached an electrode to her forehead and to a toe in order to reveal all sorts of in-between insights about her physical condition. It reminded me of dissecting rabbits at school. By passing an electrical current through a dead rabbit's leg, the muscle would twitch as if it were still alive. Jen said no twitching occurred in her case but the electrode readout revealed she had the muscle tone of a 91 year old, which sounds worrying unless you happen to be 91. Jen is 48. She bought 2kg dumbbells - hardly enough to make a difference but she could not lift anything heavier - and now she goes powerwalking carrying one in each hand. With exaggerated knees-up strides and shooting arms high above her head, she gives the impression of climbing a ladder as she walks. She looks ridiculous. My other sister, Maureen, is less of an empathiser. "How are you, bro?" "Yep, fine." "Pity." Yet she also felt the need to go to the same naturopath for the electrode test. It revealed she had the muscle tone of a 41 year old - not bad for her 46 years - but she also had some mysterious problem with fluid retention, about which I wish to know nothing. Maureen smugly decided not to buy any weights and nor did she feel the need to go powerwalking even though she certainly could do with it from behind. It all made me worry about my own muscle tone although it rather depends on which muscles. My legs, though skinny, are quite muscular from riding the bike; yet my arms have not been muscular for years, not even my drinking arm. Since I am not inclined to spend money to have a naturopath, or anyone else, attach electrodes to my extremities, I took direct action and bought two dumbbells - 4kg each on principle - which are a damn sight heavier than they look. This morning I spent two minutes pumping iron and slumped exhaustedly back on the bed feeling as if I had broken every bone in my biceps. These days I don't even have the strength of my own convictions.


Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 7 2004


TECHNO CHECK ON REALITY


ONCE, in pre-Microsoft days, I would have returned from a week's leave to find a manila folder bulging with all the correspondence that was deemed too difficult for someone else to handle while I was away, including the stuff that was still there from before I left. I once estimated I would need to go on leave for at least eight weeks before someone else attended to the problems inside the folder. Make that eight months. The bulging folder was there again to greet me when I returned from a week off, only now there were also 355 emails. No, I did not bother to count them individually but my computer screen shows 25 emails at a time and there were 14 screenfuls plus an extra 5. I could have clicked on the Tools button to delete them all at once but one never knows if hidden among them might be Rupert Murdoch's call to work in New York or London. Waiting, waiting... It took a good three hours to run through them all, deleting the threatening and abusive ones as well as those from the PR firms without bothering to check the contents. I next looked at the corporate entries to see who had been promoted or demoted. Not finding my name there, I pushed on to the really important items such as the invitations to lunch, which took quite a while to prioritise. With the final 11 emails, finding only looming catastrophe, I returned them to the file for later attention. Amid the inexorable march of technology, I am determined not to succumb to pressure to open business emails while on leave, even though I could do it from just about anywhere. Do it once and I fear the next step would see me buying a refrigerator with an internet screen built into the door, an expensive gewgaw which is not half as useful as a fridge magnet. Speaking of which, on returning home, I found an old shopping list stuck to the fridge. Now, I come from the old-fashioned school of English grammar, a person who punctuates his mobile phone text messages, but I always use abbreviations on shopping lists. Why waste time writing out "Tomato and cheese foccacia rolls"? Instead, in my own code, I write "T-rolls", which works most of the time. The problem with this particular list was it had been written a week earlier when the items were still in my mind and now I could not remember whether T stood for tissues or tea; T-sauce for tabasco or tomato; T-brush for toilet or tooth; and T-paste for tomato or tooth? Even on a toss of the coin, I should have got half the Ts right but, no, I now have a toothbrush to clean the toilet and the next pasta sauce will taste unusually of toothpaste. Thank goodness I had taken care to spell "Toilet Rolls" in full. A foccacia roll would not have done the same job.



Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 30 2004

NOT ALL BEER AND SNORKELS


SITTING under a tropical Queensland palm tree sipping a Bundy, lime and dry, with Venus glittering over water towards my beach chair, I have been considering some new life options. One is to find an undiscovered Whitsundays beach protected by a rainforest mountain, plant a few coconut palms and, bingo, I've got it made in the shade. Or, although I have no sailing experience, to buy a graceful ketch and cruise the South Seas. Instead of which, having followed the highway named Bruce for three weeks as far north as Townsville, reality check, the time has come to return to Adelaide. Quickly, before I forget, some postcards: A fried bat hanging dead by its wings between power lines scaring the hell out of me at twilight; roads littered with flattened Bundy & Cola cans and just as many flattened cane toads; "Cane Field For Sale" signs; and a classic Queenslander house, built on stilts, with a matching dog kennel on mini-stilts. But overwhelmingly Queensland is a profusion of wildlife. Such as walking through a melaleuca forest trailing a plume of butterflies like an Outback dust cloud, or snorkelling on coral reefs with Nemo and his dad Marlin. In the coral cays, the gaily-painted tropical fish are up at dawn putting on their makeup, fixing their faces and stripes, for the daily showtime. Only the silver trevally make no effort at all. The birdlife is a joy, especially the parrots. So why do people keep lorikeets in backyard aviaries, as they do in Queensland, when the same birds live all around them in the trees, free? SA has fewer native creatures by comparison, which, if you ask me, makes them all the more precious. I could not afford to stay on Bedarra Island, which costs an obscene $1500 a day, and stayed instead on Brampton Island at the $150 standby rate including all meals. The guests occupying the posher apartments had tubs of water floating with hibiscus left by their front doors to clean the sand off their precious feet. In steerage class, after a couple of days, my bed felt like a sandpit. Still, it was more suitable at my age than Airlie Beach, now overrun by backpackers. The yobs in one bar were already doing drunken pushups by mid-afternoon in some sort of drinking competition. For good commercial sense, the tour operators have based themselves at Airlie Beach. "No problems, guys, too easy..." the reef guides say, always using "guys" regardless of gender. A safety demonstration included the advice: "Do not jump directly into the lifeboats, guys, especially not if you are wearing high heels." Oh, you guys. Last night in Townsville was spent in a guesthouse - the same one occupied by the US Navy during WWII - and I dreamed not of coconuts falling on me but of snow, and had to turn off the ceiling fan, I was so cold. Time to come home. To winter. Sigh.