April 5th, 2009

Before coming to Australia, I had a few worries. Sunburn was a potential concern, as was the fact I had no idea how to tell the deadly poisonous spiders from the regular, fly-eating, web-weaving sort. Not once did it occur to me, however, I might have problems understanding the locals or deciphering the newspapers. As a veteran Home and Away watcher (1989-1991), I was confident I would be able to comprehend Australians and, indeed, communicate with them.

After all, they speak English, albeit with slightly mangled vowels, and they use the same words we do, apart from the occasional “Fair dinkum!” and “You flamin’ galah!”. Don’t they?

No, actually. They have an entire vocabulary unto themselves. Like America and England, Ireland and Australia are nations divided by a common language. I first noticed this when it came to drinking, which says a lot about my priorities upon arriving.

In the pub, Aussies don’t drink pints. They drink little glasses of beer called, variously, schooners, middies and pots. At home, they drink tinnies and stubbies (small bottles of beer, which are kept cool with insulated stubby-holders) or goon (wine in a box).

They buy their take-out alcohol in bottle shops and sometimes bring it to the beach in Eskies (coolers). By the way, Australia has drive-through bottle shops, which could be a recession-proof idea for someone. The drive-through off-licence must surely be up there with the funeral home in terms of viability during a downturn.

Strine or Strayan — the language spoken in this great land of Straya — is not limited to booze. I’ve found myself perplexed by the language barrier in all sorts of situations.

In a department store, I hunted in vain for the bedlinen section, where I wanted to buy a duvet. Eventually, a shop assistant told me to head for the Manchester department and ask for a doona. Key to becoming a fluent Strine speaker is the awareness that Aussies can’t be bothered sounding out words of more than two syllables. Relations are rellos and ambulance drivers are ambos. Both referees and refugees are reffos, which may lead to some confusion at footy matches. Those often take place in the arvo. Petrol stations are servos, an uncoordinated person is unco and binmen are garbos.

While these abbreviations are slang, they are used regularly in newspapers and magazines, as are all sorts of other words peculiar to Australia. I’ve learnt, for example, that diggers are soldiers, ockers are louts and bogans are, well, skangers. In an article about the nude photos of politician Pauline Hanson, the word r**ting was used, replete with asterisks. It dawned on me the missing letters were oo and I made a mental note not to tell anyone I was rooting for the Sydney Swans in footy games. Instead, I’ll barrack for them because that’s what people do here.

Some Australian words and expressions are only useful in this country. If you bumped into someone on Grafton Street and told them you were mad as a cut snake, they would just look at you like you had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock. But there are a few words of Strine I think would be apposite in Ireland these days.

Rort: To misappropriate public money or resources, to fiddle the system (usually used of politicians). Yup, they’ve been rorting us for years and now we have a word for it.

Wowser: An annoyingly pious person with strong moral views. You know that insufferable, holier-than-thou colleague who is forever pontificating about how all the feckless Celtic tiger-era spendthrifts deserve their ignominious downfall? Total wowser.

Retrenched: Laid off. The problem with “laid off” is that it doesn’t convey the stomach-churning horror of losing your job. Being retrenched suggests a struggle to stay alive in a swampy trench, with bullets whizzing overhead. Much more appropriate.

Bludger: Chronically unemployed person on social welfare by choice. Irish bludgers are currently aghast at the numbers of retrenched people joining the queues and causing delays at the dole office.

Battler: Someone who struggles by on very little, but never gives up. Calling someone a battler is the great Aussie compliment and should probably become the great Irish compliment over the next few months and years.

Spruiker: A person who stands outside a shop, bar or nightclub, exhorting passers-by to go in and spend money. Given the way the Irish retail and leisure sectors are headed, I shouldn’t be surprised if spruikers start popping up on every corner soon.

Op shop: Thrift store. If you’re used to shopping in Brown Thomas, having to rifle through the rails in a second-hand shop will feel like a comedown. Calling it an “opportunity shop” may make a depressing experience feel more hopeful. By the way, Aussies don’t rummage in op shops. They fossick.

Have the shits: Be in a foul temper. I learnt this one when an Aussie friend announced grumpily he had the shits and then looked puzzled when I offered him Imodium. If you don’t have the shits by now about the spectacular mismanagement of Ireland Inc, there’s no saving you. And that’s fair dinkum.

February 22nd, 2009

Sometimes it’s a struggle to get my head around the fact that I live in Australia now. I mull it over as I drink my morning coffee and contemplate the azure sky arching over the northern reaches of Sydney Harbour. The yellow and green Manly ferry chugs by below, passing a white yacht in full sail and a speedboat tugging a swooping paraglider. A brightly coloured butterfly dances above the terrace. It’s hard to believe, but this is where I live.

I cannot imagine what it is like to be in Ireland now because I’m so far away, geographically and mentally. I know it’s grim. Every article and e-mail I read conveys an unrelenting hopelessness, but when you’re 12,000 miles away in the sunshine, it’s difficult to appreciate the enormity of Ireland’s meltdown.

A friend recently returned home after a stint overseas. “It is worse than I thought,” she tells me. “On the news we are now watching images I know we will be seeing on Reeling in the Years in a decade.” I gulp as this sentence flashes up on-screen.

It resonates more than all of the news articles I have read. Things are that bad? Reeling in the Years bad? Oh dear.

I didn’t plan to emigrate; I planned to travel. Having blazed a glorious trail through my savings, I needed to stop in Sydney for a while. Under normal circumstances I would stay a few months, then move on, and slowly head for home. But I’m starting to feel like an accidental emigrant. The message from everyone is “don’t come home”. Even my mother says it: “Things are terrible. Just dreadful. Whatever you do, don’t come home.”

It’s odd, this sense of having escaped just in time. It’s as though I’ve been picked up by a passing freighter and am standing on the deck with a blanket around my shoulders, keeping a white-knuckled grasp on the handrail and watching the good ship Ireland list horribly in angry seas.

This discomfiture is compounded by a vague feeling of guilt. A fairweather citizen, I enjoyed the boom in Ireland and am staying well away during the bust. I see that Brian Lenihan says Ireland is “fighting for its economic future”. Shouldn’t I be there, fighting away alongside everyone else, bailing water or patching the gaping wounds in the hull? Would one extra set of hands make any difference?

On the Irish Times website an unhappy returned emigrant who “believed in the miracle” of the new Ireland, says he is desperately disappointed by the parlous mismanagement that has sent the country towards ruin. The article gets a big reaction, both from other returned emigrants and those who have stayed away. All are angry and sad. The newspaper calls them the “disillusioned diaspora”.

It dawns on me that I’m becoming one of them. I pay rent in another country. I have an Australian tax file number. Every time I open my wallet, the yellow and grey edge of my Commonwealth Bank ATM card reminds me that I’m not in Kansas any more. I have paid AU$13.50 (¤6.80) for a box of Barry’s tea bags — if that doesn’t make me a paid-up member of the diaspora, I don’t know what could.

Even though Ireland seems like a miserable grey blob viewed from here, since I’ve stopped travelling and put down some roots (admittedly little more than tendrils at this stage), I’ve started to feel a little homesick. It’s not a heartfelt, poetic homesickness for mountains shrouded in mist and dew-drenched green fields. It’s a prosaic, day-to-day sort of homesickness.

I get frustrated and cranky in the supermarket because, despite tramping grumpily up and down the aisles, I can’t find rashers or tomato puree. This is a typical supermarket in an English-speaking country and these are basic food items, so where the hell are they? It’s all I can do not to throw my shopping basket on the floor, get a bus to the airport, fly home and go to Superquinn or Supervalu or Tesco, where I will be able to find rashers and tomato puree with my eyes closed.

Turns out the rashers are in the barbecue section, hiding behind the pseudonym Short Cut Bacon. They prove a poor imitation of rashers as we know them. As for tomato puree, Australians call it tomato paste and it is sold only in tins or small yogurt cartons. “That’s a clever idea, selling it in tubes,” says an Australian friend. “Isn’t it?” I say, through gritted teeth.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Australia. It’s both staggeringly beautiful and breezily fun. And I like Australians, even if their disarming directness occasionally makes me long for that peculiarly Irish habit of verbally waltzing around a topic without ever getting to the point. When the magnitude of the bushfires in Victoria became apparent, I was deeply upset in a way I wouldn’t have been had it happened when I was living at home. I live here now and I took it personally.

But it’s not home. Still, I’m here for the time being and I just have to get used to it. From now on, you’ll only be getting occasional dispatches from Down Under. I know there is only so much Australiana people can take. So I’ll check in from time to time, and meanwhile the best of luck keeping the ship afloat.

February 8th, 2009

Slip! Slop! Slap! It’s an Australian mantra. In the fierce sun here, everyone is exhorted to slip on a T-shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. While I can do the slipping and slopping, the slapping is a problem — hats don’t fit me. I have a really big head and it always looks as though I’ve accidentally picked up a child’s hat and am trying it on for humorous effect.

I’m deeply embarrassed by this — it seems so unladylike to have an enormous head — but I try not to let on I care. “All the brains,” I say mock-ruefully, when friends make me try on hats and then guffaw. “Yup, I need a huge head for all the brains,” I say, beaming broadly because it’s so incredibly funny that I’m the Elephant Man’s sister. Inside I’m dying. It’s an affliction normal-headed people could never understand.

Over the years, I’ve tried on innumerable hats and they never fit. Shops tend to label women’s hats as “one size”, for which I read “Tiny”. Occasionally, they come in Small, Medium and Large, which appear to be for heads the size of golf balls, tennis balls and footballs, respectively. None are ever for heads the size of medicine balls.

I’ve tried men’s hats and been similarly disappointed. Occasionally, a flat cap fits but as Dinny from Glenroe is hardly a fashion icon, I’ve desisted. Rarely, some other sort of man’s hat has fitted, but been deeply unflattering. Anyway nobody, with the possible exception of Helena Bonham Carter, pairs a pretty summer dress with a Russian military hat with furry ear flaps.

It’s particularly frustrating because I’ve always thought of myself as a hat person. I could carry off a hat, if I could find one large enough. Every time I see a girl in a beret, a cloche or a floppy straw number, I think wistfully: “That could be me, if only milliners dared to dream big.”

Over the years, I’ve come to accept hatlessness as my cross to bear, but now I’m in Australia and it’s practically a criminal offence to go bare-headed. I’m asked constantly why I’m not wearing a hat and warned of the dire consequences of sunburn and sunstroke.

So I’ve tried on dozens since I got here. Almost none have fitted. A bile-green bucket hat I found in a surf shop did fit, just about. “What do you think?” I asked my friend delightedly. “Weeell,” she said, her face contorting in that way faces do when people are desperately trying to think of something nice to say and can’t manage it. I looked in the mirror and saw Victor Meldrew. I didn’t buy the hat.

Then I stumble on Strand Hatters, a shop just off George Street in Sydney, which sells every sort of head gear imaginable, even fezzes and pith helmets. My pulse quickens. I go in, trying to look casual. Gingerly, I pick a Panama hat from a shelf and glance at the label. It’s an extra-large. I put it on. It fits. Onlookers will assume I’ve mugged an elderly European gentleman for his hat, but I don’t care. And if this one fits, maybe others in here do, too.

I take off the Panama and put on an extra-large stetson. It fits. I try an extra-large Akubra, the Australian bush hat. It fits. It’s good to know that if I ever want to pass myself off as a cattle rancher, I can. The extra-large Homberg fits. I tip it down over one eye and do my best Bogart face in the mirror. I’m not sure when I was last this happy.

As I dart giddily about the shop, a thought occurs to me. Although this is a men’s headwear store, I might actually find a flattering hat here. One that looks as though I chose it for its fashionability rather than its gargantuan size.

I enlist the help of the shop assistant, a polite young man, and explain how I have a huge head. He is sympathetic and pretends he can’t tell this just by looking at me. “What about this one?” he says, picking up a trendy pork pie hat. “It’s a 61.” This means nothing to me, but when I try the hat, it doesn’t fit.

“Have you the next size up?” I ask brightly. He looks embarrassed. “Normally, anything above a 61 is a special order,” he mutters. I force a tight smile. “Never mind,” I say.

He’s not defeated, however, and suggests I try a woven seagrass trilby. It fits. Not only that, it looks hip. I’m both triumphant and vindicated. I knew I could carry off a hat.

Once my excitement dies down, I admit it’s actually a little tight. “That’s okay, I can stretch it on this,” he says, pointing to a medieval-looking contraption on the counter. He puts the hat on it and cranks a big handle. After five minutes or so, I try it again. It’s less tight, but not perfect. “If we stretch it overnight, it should be ideal,” he says. So I hand over AU$49.95 (€24.99) and leave my hat to spend an uncomfortable night on the rack.

Tomorrow, finally, I will be able to participate fully in the great Aussie tradition of slipping, slopping and slapping. Every day, in some small way, I’m a little less like a tourist.

January 25th, 2009

Tomorrow, millions of Aussies will join together in some much-loved activities — firing up the barbie, playing backyard cricket, competing in flipflop-throwing contests, hitting the beach in the evening to watch the fireworks and, of course, downing a few tinnies along the way. Tomorrow, you see, is Australia Day, when the locals mark the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 and, as the promotional ads say, “Celebrate What’s Great!” about their country.

And there’s a lot to celebrate. Australia has vibrant cities, better beaches than you’ll find anywhere else, dramatic coastal scenery and awe-inspiring, wide-open bush and desert vistas. The lifestyle is laid-back and outdoorsy, and the people are mostly friendly as can be. As one of the official Australia Day websites points out, the country also gave the world the rotary hoe, permanent-crease trousers and wine-in-a-box.

So the most immediate answer that sprang to mind when a reader emailed to ask if Irish people should move Down Under was: “Duh!” Why wouldn’t you move to Australia when Ireland these days is about as much fun as the seventh circle of hell?

Why wouldn’t you sell your house, assuming you can find anyone to buy it, and come here where the sun shines and property is cheap, at least if you’re spending euros? A little more than €500,000, for example, will buy you a sprawling, period, four-bed homestead on 26 acres in the Yarramalong Valley, an hour from Sydney. Doesn’t suit? How about €300,000 for a pretty two-bedroom cottage in Glebe, a trendy suburb just a stroll from Sydney’s city centre? Tempting, no?

Unfortunately, when you stop daydreaming about this southern hemisphere paradise and start investigating the practicalities, the notion of jacking it all in and moving to Australia might lose its lustre. While you arrive with euros, once you start working you’re earning Aussie dollars, which are not quite as close to scrap paper as Zimbabwean dollars but won’t exactly leave you a princess of purchasing power.

Even before you arrive, you’ll need an Aussie visa, which is relatively easy for tradespeople to get but more difficult for those in other professions. Even with a visa you could struggle to find a job. Half a million Australians are unemployed, with more being laid off every week. Matters aren’t as dire as they are at home, but dark times are coming. New South Wales is already in recession and the whole country will probably be in the same sinking boat before the year is out.

“Batten the hatches,” advised a report last week by Access Economics, a leading economic forecaster. “This is not just a recession. This is the sharpest deceleration Australia’s economy has ever seen.” The report predicted that the country’s economic boom would “unwind scarily fast” and concluded gloomily, if frankly, that the federal budget was “buggered”.

Still, if you’re not working, you’ll have plenty of time to do whatever you like, right? Eh, wrong, actually. Australians might be laid-back but their rulers are not. This is a nanny state par excellence. One of the first things you’ll see at the beach is an enormous sign warning you of all the dangers of being at the beach (such as rip currents) and listing all the things you’re not allowed to do — drink alcohol or collect invertebrates, for a start.

The federal government will soon introduce mandatory internet filtering — in other words, censorship — although this is being opposed by the newly launched Australian Sex Party (“We’re serious about sex”). State governments seem to be vying with each other to introduce ever-more restrictive liquor laws.

After midnight, bars in many of Sydney’s large venues must now close for 10 minutes every hour, cannot serve more than four drinks to any one person, cannot serve shots and cannot serve drinks in glass containers. Obviously these restrictions have the effect of people drinking exactly as much as they used to, if not more due to the stress of having only 50 minutes an hour in which to get to the bar, and having to split rounds so everyone gets a drink.

Conversely, while Sydney is known as Sin City because of its 24-hour drinking culture (or maybe 23-hour when you subtract all those 10-minute time-outs), it can be tricky to get a drink in smaller towns. In Batemans Bay, a seaside town with about the same population as Carlow, we couldn’t find a bar open after 10pm. The centre of Wollongong, a city larger than Cork, was eerily deserted on a Tuesday evening. Tumbleweed rolling through would be by far the most exciting event of a midweek night out in Wollongong.

It’s an early-to-bed, early-to-rise culture in Australia — I still can’t get used to receiving cheery texts from Aussies at 8am — and night owls like me might never acclimatise. At least being a night owl allows you to chat easily to the folks at home, 11 hours behind and at least 30 hours’ travel away.

So should you move to Australia? Despite all the reasons not to, if it’s good weather, room to roam and quality of life you’re after, the answer is still probably “Duh!”. It wouldn’t be easy, but it couldn’t be worse than riding out the recession at home. Who knows, in a few years’ time you may find yourself taking part in that other great tradition of Australia Day — the citizenship ceremony.

January 11th, 2009

In accordance with their reputation, I’ve found Australians are a pretty relaxed bunch. The two words I’ve heard most often since getting here are “no worries”. It’s even acceptable to wear thongs to the pub, once you understand thongs are flip-flops, and nobody is too hung up on the finer points of etiquette.

There is one serious social faux pas, however — and that is using more than your fair share of water. A large sign in the lush front garden of a house in Brunswick West, a Melbourne suburb, says: “Tank Water in Use”. Friends explain it’s because of the social stigma attached to watering your garden from the mains. Keen gardeners use recycled bathroom or laundry water. Everyone else sticks to drought-tolerant plants or just installs paving or decking outside the house.

Australians take this extremely seriously; water rage is a recognised phenomenon. Offenders are likely to be reported to the local authorities, and worse has happened. In November 2007, a 62-year-old man in Sydney died after a passer-by attacked him for violating water restrictions. In fact, the dead man had been hosing his lawn during permitted hours.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent, with the lowest rainfall rates. This, combined with high evaporation and heavy consumption, means water is at a premium.

In Melbourne, it’s obvious how critical the shortage is. A huge sign on an overpass in the city centre displays the level in the city’s reservoirs. Last week it was 34.6%, down from 38.6% in the same week last year and from almost 75% in 1997.

Melbourne has always been drought-prone — there were sporadic hosepipe bans in the 1860s — but the current situation is graver than ever. The city is in its tenth consecutive year of drought. Locals can water their gardens only two days a week, and between 6am and 8am, and are forbidden to refill their swimming pools or wash their cars, other than using a bucket of water to clean windows, mirrors and lights.

The restrictions are working, to a degree. In 2007, per capita consumption was down to 1930s levels, but a booming population and the continuing drought mean reservoir levels continue to decline. Local authorities are constantly dreaming up new ways to curb water use.

Friends living here recently received shower timers in the post. “We’re only supposed to shower for four minutes,” explains one, before glancing at his wife and adding wryly, “no matter how long your hair is.” “I save water in other ways,” she protests, with mock indignation.

The timers are part of the T155 campaign, to encourage Melburnians to keep their individual consumption below 155 litres a day. It was launched six weeks ago by John Brumby, the premier of Victoria, who likes a cheesy photo opportunity as much as the next politician and wielded a spanner to show how easy it is to install a water-efficient showerhead.

The drought has more contentious repercussions than cutting shower times, though. Water is provided by private utility companies, and when consumers use less, as they have been told to do, the retailers increase rates to maintain their revenues. Prices are expected to almost double by 2013.

Another cause of controversy is the proposal to build a desalination plant on the Bass Strait coast, southeast of Melbourne, which would provide the city with more drinking water but would also emit enormous quantities of carbon dioxide. Last weekend, in an only-in-Australia type of protest, a clutch of Olympians and Aussie Rules players took part in a celebrity surfing contest to show their opposition to the plant.

As unlikely as we are to see Sonia O’Sullivan or GAA stars take to the waves, Australia’s present is Ireland’s future. Last November, Dublin city council engineers said the capital’s water supply is “on a knife-edge”, with shortages expected by 2011 and permanent rationing by 2016. The council is holding a public consultation on 10 proposed options to solve or at least ameliorate the looming crisis, including piping water to Dublin from lakes on the River Shannon, or a desalination plant.

Newly exercised by water-shortage issues, I consulted the Water Supply Project, Dublin Region, website to add my two cents to the consultation process, but was quickly dissuaded by its bureaucrat-speak. (Random sample from the Frequently Asked Questions page: “Is an integrated abstraction plan required to demonstrate the cumulative effect of existing and proposed abstractions within the catchment and also those abstractions leaving the catchment?”) I gave up entirely when I couldn’t figure out where or how I was supposed to have my say. It’s almost as though the council doesn’t really want my input.

Had there been a big “Have Your Say” button on the website, I would have suggested the council follow the Aussies’ example, recognise that building new reservoirs is not sustainable, and instead hammer home the need for everyone to conserve and reuse water. Drought may seem like an alien concept in a damp country such as Ireland, but in a few decades it could be our grim reality. You never miss the water till the well runs dry.

December 28th, 2008

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” says the Fashion Police column in the Sydney Morning Herald. “And the annual crimes against fashion include flashing Santa earrings, reindeer antlers, naughty elf lingerie and forgetting to apply sunscreen.” Sunscreen? It’s Christmas, but not as I know it.

Every year around the middle of December, my mother and I check in with each other, asking: “Do you feel it?” or “Have you felt it yet?” — “it” being that Christmassy feeling. Maybe it’s only diehard festive fans like us who really succumb to it, but you know what I mean: that tingling fizz of excitement, anticipation and sentimental conviviality specific to the season. It makes you spend too much, ask strangers’ children what Santa is bringing, choke up at the sight of old friends in the pub and parumpapumpum under your breath while queuing in the bank.

This year, however, I’m in Sydney and, frankly, it’s just not Christmassy. That’s not solely because of the need for sunscreen, although you do need it (“At least factor 30+,” warns an Aussie friend), but they don’t go for it the way we do. There aren’t as many street decorations or themed window displays and there certainly isn’t the same frenzy of consumerism — although that was probably lacking a little at home this year, too.

I’m determined to engender that festive feeling in myself somehow and, to the indulgent tolerance of a friend from Cork who has invited me to be her temporary flatmate in Sydney, I spend my first week in Australia on an all-out hunt for Christmassiness.

A friend invites us along to drinks with her workmates. We start at the Opera Bar, a chichi beer garden next to the Opera House. It’s Friday and the place is thronged with a smartly dressed, after-work crowd, many drinking champagne. It’s warm but overcast. “It’s a pity the weather’s not better,” says one of the workmates. I smile politely and think, but do not say: “It’s a pity it’s not a hell of a lot worse and then this might actually feel like Christmas, instead of a garden party in August.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m having a good time and I continue to do so for the next 10 hours of bar-hopping. But while everyone we meet is full of seasonal cheer — most particularly the group of 20 or so all sweltering in Santa costumes — I still don’t feel “it”.

I ask my Aussie friend if she is going to the beach on Christmas Day. “No,” she says, almost wistfully. She’s going to her family’s farm, which is out in the bush, six hours from Brisbane. It will be at least 40C. “We’ll have champagne at breakfast, then go from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned swimming pool and then home again for turkey and ham,” she says.

“Lovely,” I say.

“Bloody hot,” she replies.

A couple of days later, we head for a live outdoor carol service. It is being given by a four-woman a cappella group, who trill lustily through a selection of global carols (“This one’s from Argentina! Join in everybody!). The stage is next to an enormous fir tree garbed in coloured lights and neon reindeer. Most of the audience is in shorts and T-shirts; a few are wearing Santa hats.

We sit on the ground to watch, a few yards from a bored- looking man selling ice cream. Admittedly, it is lovely to sit and listen as the sun sets over Darling Harbour. I take a closer look at the tree. The reindeer are actually kangaroos.

The next day, I am cheered by the sound of a marching brass band rattling through Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I can’t see it, though, because I’m stuck in a hair salon two storeys up from street level as a colourist winces at my sun-scorched mop.

My temporary flatmate has suggested we fill stockings for each other, so once my hair appointment is done, I go shopping. This is what I needed — someone for whom to buy presents. The more bags I accumulate, the cheerier I feel. Strolling out of the Victorian-era Strand Arcade, I notice a large crowd in Haigh’s, a fancy chocolate shop. A security guard is marshalling the queue at the entrance. I giggle to myself. What could be more Christmassy than a chocolate shop with a bouncer?

Every year, once I get that feeling, I have it until January. In the end, this year is no different. It finally kicks in during the stocking shopping and lasts through a drunken Christmas Eve in an Irish bar (where Fairytale of New York is on repeat and the night ends with the national anthem — ours, not theirs) and a hazily hungover Christmas afternoon on Bondi beach, where we stick out like sore thumbs for wearing neither bikinis nor Santa hats. It’s then buoyed by a bottle of champagne, a roast turkey dinner and endless calls and texts from home on Christmas night.

On St Stephen’s Day, I step onto our terrace to smoke a cigarette. “Hello,” says a voice. I look around to see a small boy peeking up at me from the gap under the fairylight-draped fence between us and next door. “Excuth me, pleath can I have my ball back?” he lisps. I find the ball and throw it back over the fence.

“Thank you,” he says and disappears, before reappearing a couple of seconds later. “Merry Chrithmath,” he grins.

I beam back at him. I may be caked in sunscreen, but I’m still feeling pretty Christmassy.

December 14th, 2008

After two months in southeast Asia I’m covered in bumps, bruises, scratches and bites. I’ve lugged my overstuffed rucksack onto buses, trains, boats and planes. I’ve met hundreds of people and stayed everywhere from flea-pits to four-star hotels. (Oh come on, what’s an emergency fund for?). So now that I’ve earned my backpacking stripes, this is what I’ve learnt so far.

Just cross the road, they won’t knock you down. It always seems as if that seething mass of tuktuks, trucks, buses, and bicycles will make mincemeat of any pedestrian foolhardy enough to step into it. But it doesn’t, for reasons neither I nor the laws of physics can explain.

Keep your mouth closed in the shower. And don’t drink the tap water. The ice is fine, though, and so are the salads, whatever the guidebooks say.

Grin and bear it. Or just eat it — it won’t kill you. When you discover the meat on a stick you bought from a man at a street stall is not “Chicken! Chicken!”, as he insisted, but kidneys, well, just chow down. (But kidneys of what? My stomach still wonders.)

When you gotta go, you gotta go. If that means balancing precariously on a slippery, fetid, squat toilet while wearing a backpack and striving to keep your trouser hems clear of the wet, filthy floor, so be it. Western-style toilets would seem weird if you weren’t used to them; the proof being the dirty footprints I saw on toilet seats in Malaysia.

Unrequited love is painful, or exceedingly itchy. Unrequited for the mosquitoes, painful and itchy for me. The blighters love me. They really do.

Backpacking is a great leveller. Backpackers are people out of context. You normally make up your mind about someone within seconds of meeting them, but that’s hard to do when every traveller you meet is tanned, slightly grubby and wearing the same uniform of flip-flops, T-shirt and baggy shorts. You can’t begin to guess how any one of them look in “real life” or what they do for a living.

I’ve made friends with two Parisians, for example. One turned out to be a hardened police detective — “When I ’ave to go in a room where zere is a dead body, I just stop for a second and zen I go in” — while the other is a stoner who used to live in a squat. Now, they’re both just backpackers.

Most people are all right, I’ve discovered. Some guidebooks and online travel forums would lead you to believe that everyone is out to rip you off, or rob, drug and mug you. They’re not. For the easily worried traveller (me), this is a marvellous realisation. Most people are just getting on with their day.

Still, you must expect the unexpected. Robert Burns was wrong to say that “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”. They always gang agley. Whether it’s floods in Vietnam, civil unrest in Thailand or a delayed flight leading to a missed connection and being marooned in Kuala Lumpur’s absolutely-no-frills, low-cost air terminal, things happen that you cannot control. Scrap the plan and make a new one. When that falls apart, make another one.

I’ve gone days without meeting another Irish person or seeing someone in a Guinness T-shirt, but nonetheless I keep spotting reminders of Ireland. There are O’Briens sandwich bars in Singapore, for example. After doing a double-take at the familiar green sign, I was tempted to have a wrappo or a shambo, but it seemed like a waste of an eating opportunity in the street food capital of the world.

Flicking through TV channels one day, I came upon Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova strolling around a wintry Dublin in the video for Falling Slowly. I bumped into an enormous display of Cecelia Ahern novels in a Malaysian bookshop, giggled at seeing Batt O’Keeffe quoted in the Bangkok Post, and was greeted with a cheery “Dia dhuit, conas ata tu?” by a market trader on the Khao San Road. I mightn’t always know where I’m going, but the hints of home remind me where I’m coming from.

You can’t leave yourself behind either. While planning my trip I laboured under the delusion that, after a couple of months away, I would somehow have morphed into a lean, tanned, Zen, global nomad. I didn’t realise that I would still be me, wherever I went. My suntan cycle goes from red to pink to white, just as it always did, and PMT unfailingly renders me irritable and anxious, no matter what idyllic, palm-fronded beach I’m on.

You do surprise yourself, however. I never dreamt that I, a Nervous Nellie at the best of times, would clamber across narrow, shaky, bamboo bridges with just one loose and fraying rope handrail. I certainly couldn’t have pictured those bridges being suspended high over roaring rapids in the middle of the jungle. But the bridges were there and they had to be crossed, so cross them I did.

The more you travel, the more you realise how little you’ve seen. After two months in southeast Asia I’ve barely visited any of it, really. Great chunks of the guidebook remain unthumbed. So I’ll be back. But first, a flight to Sydney on Wednesday. Time to check if Aussies really do spend Christmas Day on the beach.

November 30th, 2008

Bangkok’s airports are occupied by protesters, but I’m not too bothered. I’m in Chiang Mai, 700km away, and it’s as relaxed as ever on Wednesday evening. Unperturbed by the day’s news, I go for dinner, slurping down a big bowl of hot and sour prawn soup and a Singha beer.

Later, I find out a man was pulled from his car nearby and shot dead. Then I read the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, has flown home from Peru. In the face of trouble, he has retreated to his party’s stronghold — Chiang Mai. Sometimes, the news comes to you.

I spend much of Thursday online, trying to figure out what’s going on. The group holding the airports and Government House in Bangkok — which they have occupied since August — is the anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), more commonly referred to here as the Yellows, after the colour of shirts they wear in deference to Thailand’s revered king.

Their counterparts are the Reds, supporters of the ruling People’s Power party, formerly led by the exiled and notorious Thaksin Shinawatra. Somchai, the prime minister, is Thaksin’s brother-in-law. His control seems weak and he doesn’t appear to have any authority over the army. Rumours abound online of an imminent coup, despite the constant assurances of the po-faced army chief that he won’t stage one.

Foreign journalists tell me that the Yellows are mainly urban, educated, middle-class people who want to oust the government and neutralise Thaksin’s allegedly corrupt influence for good. The Reds are mostly poor, rural-dwellers fiercely loyal to Thaksin. But it’s more complicated than that. This is also a north-south split, a divide between Bangkok and the rest of Thailand, between royalists and republicans, and between the long-standing rich elite and the nouveau riche. Really, it’s an old-fashioned battle over money and power.

The schism is causing rifts across the country. Families and friends are split. There’s a sense it could even collapse into civil war. As it stands, Thailand is mired in an intractable and potentially bloody political quagmire and, now that the airports are shut, trade and tourism are suffering too.

As the evening goes on, the atmosphere turns slightly uneasy. First we hear that Somchai is sending in the police to dislodge the airport protesters. We hear there will be a coup at 6pm, but there isn’t. Then it’s definitely going to happen by 8pm, but it doesn’t.

About 9pm, an experienced foreign correspondent joins us for a drink. “The PAD is coming,” he says. “They have taken the train from Bangkok. The whole train — eight carriages — is full of Yellows. And the Reds are waiting for them.” This is an unnerving development. The Reds are supposed to be the unruly mob, but the Yellows are coming here, right into Red heartland. Where will they fight? Maybe just up the street at the Lanna Palace hotel, where the Reds are holed up. Truth is, no one knows. It’s all getting a bit same-same, as Thais say — no one has anything to go on but speculation and conjecture.

Could Thaksin come back? Let’s hope not. Will the King intervene, as he has before? Probably not. Is the cabinet still here? Maybe, although there were C130s flying in and out all day.

Is the prime minister still here? Apparently so. What’s going to happen? Nobody knows. The conversation goes round in circles.

Eventually, I give up and go to bed. The train from Bangkok won’t get here until the early hours of Friday and the idea of wandering around a city in the hopes of stumbling across pitched street battles doesn’t seem terribly sensible.

The next morning, I have breakfast on the terrace outside my guesthouse. The street rings with the clatter of kids in a nearby school playground. A man on a moped zooms by with a spare tyre in one hand and an inflatable blue swimming ring swung over his other shoulder. A couple of tourists amble past, gazing curiously at the enormous temple across the street. I make a To Do list: “Extend visa, post parcel, decide outfit for garden party”.

I start to wonder if two glasses of wine could have caused me to imagine last night’s edgy waiting game. I check with the front-of-house staff: “Was there any trouble? Any fighting?” “No,” one woman says, with an excited smile. “Everyone say Yellows come and fight, but they didn’t.” Just another rumour.

A friend in Bangkok messages me on Facebook to say people were woken by explosions there last night. Thai news sites say grenades were thrown and shots fired at the pro-Yellow ASTV station and there was gunfire in Bangkok near Don Muang airport. The prime minister says he is staying in Chiang Mai because he doesn’t trust the army.

By Friday evening, the police have mobilised at Bangkok’s main airport. The Yellows inside say they will “fight to the death”. The waiting game is nearly over. I can hear what sounds like a street demonstration — rousing calls on megaphones, drums, cheers. They’re probably Reds, but maybe they’re Yellows, arrived at last from Bangkok. Some Americans tell me the “demonstration” is a party at a temple a couple of blocks away. Nonetheless, I get to thinking it might be time to leave Thailand.

So I’m here in Chiang Mai on a balmy Sunday evening and I’m working my ass off. Alright, so I don’t expect much sympathy, but trust me, it’s not easy. Bad enough to be chained to the computer, but you try concentrating when there is a night market in full swing RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. And when I say in full swing, I mean in extremely loud full swing, with live music competing with tinny (and terrible and highly irritating) Thai pop music and a man on a loudspeaker who I can only assume is giving a sales pitch, a neverending sales pitch.

Oh hang on, they seem to be playing the national anthem. Suddenly everyone on the street is standing stock still, although no one is really singing along. It’s a ponderous old tune, although bits of it sound rather like our national anthem. No cheering at the end, though, just a co-ordinated mass bow and, hang on, yup we’re back to the earlier racket of the band and the pop and the man on the loudspeaker. Aaaaaaah. I may just have to dig out my earplugs.

Really I’m just cranky because I should have finished this ages ago and I didn’t and I love markets almost more than anything. The strolling! The shopping! The street food! My own worse enemy, I am. Ah well, back to work. Only a gazillion words to go.

UPDATE: It is two hours later. I give up. I CANNOT hear myself think. And I don’t really have a gazillion words to go.

I’m getting braver, you know. Like, for example, the other day I went into a Real Local Restaurant (formica tables, bare walls, not a Westerner in sight). I perused the picture menu and wondered which of the 18 white dumpling-like things – the pictures were very small – I would have for lunch.

Suddenly, the waiter grabbed the picture menu from me and handed me a piece of paper with “FISHBALL, tofu, vegetables” printed on it. The price – 30 baht (about 70c) – was scrawled underneath. I beamed at him, trying to look more confident than I felt. A couple of minutes later, I was presented with a steaming bowl of broth, brimming with noodles, three different types of tofu, lemongrass, chillies, onions, coriander and a few bobbing dumplings. Of course, it was utterly delicious.

So today I did an even braver thing. After an afternoon spent in my guesthouse, suffering the most godawful, debilitating, stomach-curdling, galloping case of…no, wait for it…writer’s block, I decided to take a break and go for a haircut.

I’ve been having such humidity-related hair issues in the past five or six weeks I had overlooked the fact that I was direly in need of a trim. Shaggy and unflattering are about the kindest adjectives you could use for the “hairstyle” I’ve been sporting.

I passed a small hair salon on Phrapakklao Road yesterday and it seemed as good a place as any to go. “Hello,” I said cheerily in Thai to the salon lady, before realising I do not speak very much more Thai at all, let alone any haircut-related Thai.

I pointed at my head and made a scissors motion with two fingers. The salon lady came over and picked up a chunk of my hair. I made the scissors motion again, but this time indicating that she should lop off a couple of inches. She picked up my fringe and I repeated my scissoring gesture. Then she took a look at the back of my head and let loose a torrent of Thai. I smiled hopefully at her. More Thai. I responded with a questioning, but still hopeful, look. “Same-same?” she asked brightly. “Same-same,” I said.

After a bracing shampoo with icy water and much smiling, nodding and sign language later (we discussed my split ends in sign language), I had me a haircut. It’s rather nice, actually, although my fringe looks a bit, eh, interesting. Total cost, including a hefty tip? Two hundred baht. Or about €4.50. Shear good value, if you ask me.