Steve McQueening

I've banged-on enough about my veggie garden over the last year or so for you to get the picture that I really love getting amongst the compost and the loam; recycling my coffee grounds to prevent snails from getting into my luscious basil leaves and doing everything I can to coax my seedlings out of the earth, and to give those young 'uns the fighting chance they need to rise up from the filth to produce fine flowers and fruit. 

I guess you could compare my dedication as a gardener to the kind of teacher who, in sappy movies of say 15 years ago, would see promise in the misbehaving youth and, against all advice and opinions of their colleagues, would take this student under their wing, spend all their spare time tutoring them, and then, to everyone's complete amazement, have them shine at the end-of-term maths quiz or whatever.  Interestingly, the same relationship portrayed in more modern films would probably see the teacher completely vilified and possibly slapped with an investigation into inappropriate relations with a minor.  But I digress; there is nothing inappropriate about the tenderness and loving caresses I give my sweet, burgeoning tomato bushes and the tender kisses and playful licks I bestow upon my zucchinis of a summer evening – absolutely nothing!

To say that I just love getting out into the garden and doing a bit of digging and sowing is true, but not entirely.  It's true of the digging and sowing one does for one's summer crop, in about September or October, but it's definitely not true of May.  I friggin' hate the cold.  I hate the damp.  And I hate going to shit-loads of effort for average winter veggies such as bloody spinach and cauliflower.  So today, my plan was to get the job over with as soon as possible, and to get back inside to the warmth and the paper, pronto!

So I had a dump of dirt scheduled to arrive mid morning, and before that, I was out there, up to my ankles in the frigid filth, mixing stinking compost and rancid manure into what was left of the sodden beds.  Eventually the dirt arrived and I got to the back-breaking work of carting it across the yard and into the garden, only to realise after I was halfway through the pile that I had come a cropper (once again) to my meagre skills in mathematics – I had completely fudged the primary school-level mathematics equations for measuring volume in a right-angled wooden enclosure, and had ordered twice as much soil as I needed.

This soil having been dumped by the truck on my postage-stamp lawn, I couldn't leave the remainder there, and our entire yard being only slightly bigger than the lawn (comparatively, I'd say one of those postage stamps from the former Soviet Bloc countries is a pretty apt description), I was really in trouble.

So for the rest of the day, instead of being in my toastie-warm living room with a fresh coffee and the newspaper, I was walking around in the freezing, winter shadows trying to dispose of a little dirt here and a little dirt there – I felt like all those prisoners of war in The Great Escape, trying to dispose of the contents of three tunnels in little dumps here and there, right under the noses of the Germans.

I guess everyone, like me, if imagining themselves as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, pictures themselves as the rugged, all-American hero on the back of an Enfield, flying his way over a barbed-wire fence to freedom, rather than the short, chubby, British "Tommy" having to carry stinking dirt in his daks and divvying it out across the compound.  Indeed, reality really does bite!

Let's face it, I'm probably more likely to get the role of the barbed-wire, than the rugged, all-American hero.  Pic: http://www.coventrytelegraph.net

Myths and Myth-conceptions

There’ve been a few changes in Honiara since I last dropped-in, and a particularly noticeable one has been the opening and maintaining of the two pedestrian subways under the [only] main road through town.  Today, these are well-maintained with clean coats of paint courtesy of the new, controversially-appointed mobile phone operator, and are gated and locked after hours to ensure they don’t become a meeting place for miscreants to gather in the dark night to drink kwaso (illegal, distilled home brew) and indulge in other ‘unsavoury’ acts.

Although I’ve not been game to enter one of these yet, I have seen others using them, which is a tremendous contrast from five years ago, when anyone reaching within ten metres of their entrance would be repelled by the smell of stagnant mud, rotting garbage and other forms of refuse, both human and organic.  In some cases, this festering mess reached half-way up the stair-cases, and provided a reasonable indicator of the functionality of the Honiara Town Council at the time to maintain the city generally.

Now anyone understanding anything about the aid and development sector will appreciate that in many settings, expat aid workers rarely have much to do with the indigenous population, and never was this more so than in Honiara, circa 2004, when the population of the city doubled overnight with a foreign military and civil police force intent on returning this ‘rogue state’ back to peace and economic stability, as well as an additional handful of development workers concentrating on the re-establishment of the health and education systems.

In this high security environment, where for a foreigner to even look a local man directly in the eye was seen as a potential trigger to provoke aggressive confrontation, allegedly resulting in the foreigner’s likely maiming or even murder, it became very convenient for expatriates to adopt a mandatory policy of civil movement restricted to the air-conditioned comfort of sparkling, white, Toyata Hiluxes, and ‘as a security precaution’, to frequent only those public sites designated as ‘safe’ by security forces, such as one of a handful of cafes, bars and restaurants serving only ‘Western’ coffee, food and drinks, and whose prices were too exorbitant for local incomes.

As a result, in those days, aside form the daily, patronising engagements with national staff [as few as possible, I should note] foreigners had very little interaction with local people.  Now, as you can imagine, drinking crap coffee in the only espresso outlet in town and eating spaghetti with tomato ketchup from the only ‘Italian restaurant’ will only occupy a foreigner’s complete attention for so long, and after a week or so, even the most alcohol-befuddled middle-aged male, or meticulously manicured and groomed female expatriate aid worker will eventually gaze out the window of the Toyota, and wonder aloud about some curious structure or local practice for which their own experience and upbringing (in New Zealand or Australia) can offer little explanation.

Without exception, such an utterance or question will be eagerly leapt upon by the expatriate’s colleagues or peers in order to establish the latter’s superior field credibility, and an answer to the query will be confidently provided.  The questioner will then lock that piece of information away and have it ever at the ready to drop surreptitiously into the next conversation over a steaming, muddy espresso (probably at morning tea that very day) in the hope of promoting their field credibility, and at least two of these caffeine-enhanced individuals will rush back to the office to casually drop their ‘long-established awareness of local customs and practices’ into the conversation.

And by Saturday night, at someone’s exclusive, invitation-only party [attended by every expatriate in town], there will not be a soul present who doesn’t know the reason behind the curious observation from the cab of the Hilux, just a few mornings ago.

In the ‘high security’ humanitarian setting, when interactions with local people should be kept to a minimum [or preferably avoided altogether], this is how expatriates learn about local customs and practices.  While one may consider that it’s as good a process as any other, the obvious flaw is the extent to which the original ‘authority’ had any factual basis for their confident explanations or, as has often been the case, they simply made them up.

It was in this setting, some seven or so years ago, that a younger, thinner and certainly more naïve Donkey uttered a query about why young men and women, clutching their babies and young children, were taking their chances to run across the busy main road and only narrowly escaping being run-down by the speeding, shining, white Toyota Hiluxes which seemed to have recently doubled the number of vehicles on the road, when there were much safer, pedestrian subways and overpasses they could be using.

My esteemed colleague riding beside me (who I later learned had only been in the Solomons for a month, and until that time had spent his entire, thirty year career working in a regional branch of an Australian bank), assured me that the reason for their lack of use was that in many indigenous Solomon Islands communities, it was inappropriate for anyone to be positioned higher than a ‘Big Man’ (an elder or chief).  This, he informed me, meant that women could not cross the overpasses in case a Big Man was below, as she would have to pay compensation, and likewise, a Big Man would not use the underpasses.  Further, if a Big Man wasn’t going to use them, then why would anyone else?  And so, they remained unused and poorly maintained.  My colleague added that these structures had been built by the World Bank ten years before, and were a prime example of the poor outcomes of foreign aid when the community is not consulted in the planning of activities (pretty rich words from this bloke, given his performance, or the lack their of, over the proceeding years, but that’s another story altogether).

Now while I have been guilty of furthering the propagation of these kinds of myths in the past, in this instance, I do not believe I shared this information more widely, however I did believe it.  So I was admittedly surprised to see that since my last visit, the subways have been cleaned, painted, maintained and are being used.  Is there any truth to the words of my former colleague?  Who knows?  But one thing’s for sure, if it is indeed true that the reason for the lack of use of the pedestrian overpasses is that a lesser-ranking individual should never be positioned higher than a Big Man, then you’d assume that it would also be taboo to take a dump above his, and considering the amount of human excrement strewn across the overpasses each morning, for mine, the ‘official’ explanations are rapidly losing credibility.

Not much [day time] traffic along here, and on investigation (rather than swallowing unsubstantiated here say), perhaps the reasons are clearly obvious – yes, that is poo in the bottom right corner.  Pic: Hagas

Funky Town

Setting the scene.

We live in a pretty funky part of town.  I hasten to add that it certainly wasn't funky when we moved here; we're not the kind of shallow, weak-willed, easily influenced fashionista types who will blow which ever way the fickle winds of street cred will take us.  No way! We moved here long before it was funky [admittedly because we couldn't afford to live in the funky area]. 

And now, with financial markets across the globe still clawing their way out of a deep, dark, self-inflicted hole, like us years before, the Funkies have found themselves with less spare change creating an awkward bulge in their ridiculous, low-wasted, black, drain-pipes, and they too have made the journey north to 'enrich' our living experience with their very own, incredibly-individualistic-and-yet-so-like-everyone-else-in-the-room brand of cool.

And because being Funky is all about being around other Funkies, they haven't just arrived in a trickle, but rather have lobbed, en masse, into the share houses of this historic, migrant, working-class suburb, and hot on their heels, a plethora of laid/peeled-back bars, second-hand clothing stores and, most noticeably, coffee roasters have exploded onto the streetscape.

It's the latter, growing out of just about any hole in the wall, closet, stairwell or similarly confined space with street access which has really made the biggest impact upon any local residents larger than a size 24 trying to squeeze their way down the sidewalk past bandy-legged, latte-sipping über trendies (let alone trying to get through with a Hambones-sized stroller, or heaven forbid a disabled person might be allowed out of their home!) which is the main reason for this post.  So let's go for a walk and take a squiz...

Welcome to The Scene.

Without doubt, the avante garde coffee pad for local Funkies in this area is Cafe Stan [not it's real name].  Cafe Stan arrived on the scene very quietly about eight years ago, but became very noisy, very quickly, as word passed around the surrounding doss- and art-houses.  Cafe Stan's one of those places without any signage – it could be called Cafe Freddy, or Cafe Darren, or Cafe Sebastian for all I know, but it's 'known' as Cafe Stan, and that's all there is to it.

Cafe Stan's success, it should be noted, can without doubt be attributed to a fastidious commitment to really incredible coffee.  If you're after a blow-yer-head-off, tangy, single origin/estate blend, served with a fine, aromatic crema at just the right temperature, then this is your place.  But let's face it, when it comes to Funkies just wanting to be seen hanging-out with other Funkies, Stan may as well be serving up molten poo in a bucket, and word would still get 'round that this was THE place to be [seen].

Regular reader of this Blog will know that I am the kind of person who quite enjoys a fine brew just about as much as anything else I've had the fortune to experience, but even I have trouble summoning-up the courage to visit Cafe Stan for my 'morning' pick-me-up.  Why?  Well for starters, no one goes anywhere near Cafe Stan before about 11.30am.  The first rule of Funky is that you're no where near awake, sober and/or straight before 11.29, so it's all tumbleweeds and surly staff - who've obviously drawn the short straw at last night's vampire party – while the sun's in the eastern sky.

But from 11.31 onwards, the place is packed with a most eclectic bunch of [non-]personalities trying terribly hard to see what everyone else is doing without actually looking at anyone.  This is not an easy ask, I can assure you, when one is also straining every muscle and sinew trying to look incredibly cool and comfortable, while balancing on tiny, size 15-arse wooden boxes which only barely stand upright on their own.  If I didn't know better, I'd say Stan was completely taking the piss; pushing these tragically aloof, self-absorbed fashion victims to see just how far their humiliation could reach before they started to get some perspective.

Please allow me to offer an example by way of demonstration.  About two years ago, I found myself out and about alone, around midday on a Tuesday, and thought I might drop by for a long black, to see if Stan still had it going on, barista-wise.  But as I approached the stylised, peeling facade, I bottled out.  Why?  Well this is the gauntlet I faced having to run before I could even get to the door.

Wandering along the footpath towards Cafe Stan, despite it being a work day, I noticed that every one of the six wooden boxes were occupied, and as I approached, I clocked each one in turn;

Wooden box #1:  a lanky gentleman in fluorescent pink board-shorts (circa 1984), golf shoes with the frilly flaps hanging over the front, a leather vest (no shirt), a massive black moustache and a 1960s bikers flat-cap (think San Francisco 1987, or just Google the Village People).  This nit wit was not looking at the person sitting opposite him (who may or may not have been his companion), but did manage a judgemental sneer at the sight of my cargo shorts and runners.

Wooden box #2:  another lanky gentleman wearing checked shorts way up high on his waste (which, if the small wooden box hadn't been in the way, would no doubt have disappeared way up his jacksie), revealing very long, thin, white legs, and on his feet, a pair of Blundstone-style, slip-on work-boots ... SPRAY-PAINTED GOLD!  He was wearing a brown, checked golfers flat-cap (think Chevy Chase in Caddy Shack).  He did not look at me, nor did he bother to withdraw his outstretched stork's pegs, which I was forced to step over.

Wooden box #3:  A young woman in an altered, sequined 1920s cocktail frock, black GP army boots and with a silver-studded, black leather wrist-band, which just happened to match that of her companion, sitting opposite her.

Wooden box #4:  The presumed companion of Ms Charlston on box #3 was wearing nothing but a silver-studded black leather collar.  This individual was a short, ugly bull terrier, and like everyone else outside the cafe, was neither looking at its companion, nor anyone else.  It did spit-out a deep, guttural growl at my plain, blue t-shirt as I passed, however.

Wooden box #5:  Another woman, this time wearing what must have been a little girl's dress (all pretty flowers and frills), which she had managed to squeeze into with the aid of strategic slits across most of the panels.  She had green leggings protruding out the bottom, pink and purple leg warmers (Flashdance) and pointy, white flats on her feet.  Most extraordinarily about this lady (as if you needed more) was that she held her massive latte in one hand, and in the other, was trying to negotiate an early model e-reader, while trying to balance with only one butt cheek on the box (now e-readers might be like electric kettles in households nowadays, but I assure you, this phenomenon has been a rapid one – this crazy chick was leading the way).  Did I say crazy?  She tipped half her latte onto the pavement just where I was about to walk, and then spat in it!

Wooden box #6:  This kid almost certainly wasn't the Nutcase on box #5's companion, but probably chose to sit there with his NEWSPAPER just to demonstrate that he'd gone full circle and was now completely retro.  He was wearing super thin, black drainpipes, Dunlop K26ers on his feet, a tight, moth-eaten t-shirt featuring Bobby McFerrin (whose rumours of suicide must have been long-cold by the time this young 'un had even been born) and had massive, thick-rimmed Tootsie-style spectacle frames.  He was sitting closest to the front door, and talking very loudly on one of those massive, Motorola bricks from the early '90s.  As I approached the front step, ready to enter, he was screaming into the phone, "Yea-aah, he's wearing like, a pair of contemporary sneakers", after which he let out a very feminine, high pitched squeal of laughter, which caused the occupiers of both boxes #3 and #4 to start howling at a young Mum struggling to avoid on-coming traffic with a stroller out on the road (as the only way to get past the cafe's cluttered frontage).

At that point, I lost all courage and nerve.  I walked straight on past Cafe Stan and went and bought the guaranteed, worst coffee of all time from the next closest option; the last remaining takeaway 'restaurant' in inner Melbourne with an exclusive menu of deep-fried delicacies served straight to you from the glowing chamber of a greasy bain-marie – the eating place of choice for junkies down on their luck!

I know this is showing both my age, and how out of touch I have become with the young and funky, but I really don't know why Lipps Inc were so keen to get here.  Judging by the apparent way the Funkies spend all their time avoiding eye-contact and passive-aggressively competing with each other for wacky self-image supremacy, not to mention their outward disdain for anyone not considered anywhere near their league, Funky Town must be the loneliest place on earth!

Coming soon to a cafe near you ... well ... near me, anyway!  Pic: http://www.radiometal.fr

Road trip III: Sex is everywhere, but no where around me

Like the TV series, MASH, which ran three times as long as the Korean War in which it was set, this Road Trip story is reaching Cecil B. DeMille-esque proportions, greatly out-distancing the actual trip upon which it is based.  I'll see what I can do about wrapping it up.

My last waking act before leaving Windy Wellington was to return to one of the hundreds of coffee outlets I'd been churning through over the previous few days, to buzz my brain a little more while I sorted out some onward accommodation using the free Wi-Fi.

After many false starts, bogus postings and rude landlords refusing a two-night stay, I eventually got onto Frank, a beach house property owner from Napier who answered the phone with, "Awwr shut! ... ah, hello?  Frank speaking...".  Frank's engine had exploded moments before I'd called, and he was swearing blue, kiwi murder as he stood stranded on a country road.

"Yeah, thut should be no worries ... fuck ... just come up and we'll sort everythung out when you get here [boom!] ... shut, nooooooo... [click] beep beep beep...".

So with a gullet full of caffeine, a well-rested Hambones and Mrs D wrestling with a plethora of chords as she tried to get the sexy Kiwi GPS navigator working, we started on our way out of Welly ... just after a final supply run to the ironically-named 'New' World.  In no way is New Zealand more like 1980s suburban Melbourne than in its supermarkets; when I was a wee one, Coles supermarket was known as Coles' New World, and walking through the doors of the Wellington New World, the surroundings immediately had me reminiscing about climbing into one of those hard plastic trolley seats, and taking a massive dump in my daks.

The setting was flawless 1980s; tins of food were stacked in precarious, delinquent-child-attracting pyramidal displays, the trolleys were massive, deep and without the modern child-safety straps, and there was a tobacco counter up front at which stood four or five old ladies in plastic shower caps trying to buy cartons of ciggies with loose change.

Mrs D and I went crazy with the nostalgia of it all and filled that stretch-limo trolley with all kinds of stuff you haven't been able to buy in Australia for 25 years.  As we approached the checkout, we were more than a little sheepish in anticipation of the expected whack this was going to make in our savings.

The first pleasant surprise we received at the checkout was a surprisingly pleasant young man ringing-up each item with a smile, a laugh and a generally amiable disposition (something we haven't experienced in Australian supermarkets for at least two decades), and the next wonderful gift was that the African-famine-saving haul of 1980s groceries we'd just procured totalled exactly what it would have back in the '80s!

Are you kidding me?  All through our trip in NZ, all we ever heard from people we met, or on the radio, TV current affairs programs or in the papers was that Australians' salaries were 40% higher than Kiwis', and that economists were tipping this inequity to rise in the next year by 20 - 437% (depending on the disgruntlement of the person relaying the story – "Err, it's not fair.  You Australians get it easy.  We're thinking of leaving and going over to live in Aussie 'cause it's just too expensive here").  And yet there we were, with the biggest hoard of groceries since Henry VIII decided he was going to up-size Christmas dinner, costing only about 40% of a regular grocery bill back home!  Get some perspective, Kiwis!  We might get paid more than you, but it costs you nothing to live, eat, own a vehicle or an ocean-view property.

So with that warm feeling one gets from having a wallet still full of cash, and with our mouths full of pineapple lumps and 'chocolate fush', we nudged out of the New World car park, and thanks to the seductive, dulcet tones of 'Dulcie', the sexy Kiwi GPS, we were on the highway and heading-off on the Road Trip proper with some classic Black Seeds dubbing it up on the stereo to help us on our way.

Within moments, sophisticated, windy old Wellington was behind us, replaced by stretches of farmland dotted with periodic communities of New Worlds, McDonalds-es and Bunnings Warehouses.  The suddenness of the city's disappearance reminded us just how small this country was, and while musing over this, as if to hit the point home, we emerged from a deep valley and were looking out over a spectacular, sun-swept bay with dramatic, mountainous islands shooting-up out of the sparkling water.  The road along the shoreline was as tight and spectacular as our own, much-lauded Great Ocean Road, with the adrenaline-pumping bonus of no safety barriers, and we were thoroughly pumped as the dramatic views and Salmonella Dub's Dancehall Girl created an expectant air of exciting adventures to come.

As we passed through Palmerston North, university town to many of our Kiwi friends, I exhaled a deep sigh of relief that I had stuck to my guns and refused Mrs donkey's demands that we book a night's accommodation here.  Apart from Massey University, the only other thing Palmy is famous for is that at least one of its residents features on the evening news each night, usually for having beaten, killed, raped, eaten or been practicing polygamy with a neighbour and/or family member.  I quietly locked the doors as we cruised down the main drag, and gunned the Epica through the red lights to ward-off University pranksters and/or armed car jackers.

As with Wellington, we were through Palmy in a jiffy, and before long were hurtling along a windy, barrier-less road through a spectacular gorge at ridiculously dangerous speeds thanks to a massive cattle truck balling down on our arse.  This deep canyon seemed to be the sluice via which inland communities emptied their refuse into Palmerston North, and before long we were cruising though the quaint little town of Woodville, where we stopped for a break, a leak and an ice cream.

The latter was sourced from a wonderfully, 1950s-looking dairy in the main street, and we took our 30 cent (!) treats a block down a side street to a magnificent local park.  What I have failed to describe to date is the great contrast between the colour of the Australian countryside and that of North Island New Zealand – NZ is so spectacularly green!  And this public park was just incredible.  Reverently we each took off our shoes before tiptoeing onto the fluffy, emerald carpet, and then grinning guiltily, we stood waiting for some old Kiwi, Mr McGreggor-type to come running over to us waving a shovel and shouting, "Git off the grass, wull yous!".  But we soon realised that this lush, well clipped and rolled public lawn was fair game for all, and judging by the indifference being displayed by the bike-riding teenagers wandering across the furry floor over yonder, such facilities appeared reasonably commonplace.

We stuck around in that park for about two hours, lounging back on the soft grass beneath the swaying oaks, and watching Hambones amuse himself on the gravity-defying, 1950s safety standard play equipment.  After a while we also came to take a little interest in the other park users, and to notice certain behaviours and circumstances that bound them.

Firstly, over the course of an hour, a gathering of young teens swelled from three to about twelve, comprising tough, fit, young white boys in low-slung daks, and similarly-conditioned girls in cut-off denim shorts and crop tops.  They would move from one set of play equipment to the next, flirting and laughing together, almost touching and then breaking away again.  They seemed intimately familiar with each other and ... well, bored. 

From time to time, one would call out to similarly-aged citizens walking along the park's periphery, or through the middle on the immaculately curated paths as they pushed prams containing wee, crying babies.

The original group continued to wander from the swings, to the slide, laughing and flirting and occasionally splitting off in couples to hold hushed conversations beside the thick oaks, before outing a shrill laugh and re-joining their friends.

As we packed-up and headed-off to join potty-mouth Frank in Napier, I reflected that despite the lush surroundings of Woodville, like so many small towns the world over, there was very little to occupy young people such to prevent the kind of boredom which can rapidly slide into circumstances which may ultimately anchor them in the very place which offers them so little stimulation.  I had no doubt those swinging teens (no pun intended) would soon be joining their park-traversing compatriots during infant-sleep-inducing perambulations.

Fine green grass might keep the mid-week golfing ladies busy, but for the youth of Woodville, it's not quite enough to steer 'em clear of the rough.  Pic: http://www.hickerphoto.com/putting-green-shot-oliva-nova-golf-course-valencia-12635-pictures.htm

Road Trip

We're off on a road trip.  So we load-up the massive boot of the brown Kingswood with chips, biscuits, bread and sauce, an Esky full of beer, Coke and sausages, fishing rods and cricket bat, ball and stumps, strap the boards to the roof racks, load the tape-deck with the best mixed tapes of the year, throw the guitar and some cushions in the backseat, pick-up the girls (tight denim shorts, tans and bikini tops) and hit the highway in search of sun, sand, surf and who knows, maybe the odd bit of sex?!

Whoo hoo!  It's summer, I'm 19 and I'm off on a road trip with my best mates, some smokin' hot babes and a boot full of piss...

Hang-on, I'm not 19!  I don't drive a Kingswood anymore ... is this some kind of memory throw-back to the mid 80s? 

Hang-on, there were never any smokin' hot babes in my car when I was 19 ... is this some kind of morphing of my memories with youth-targeted TV and U-Toob advertising for clothes/mobile phones/flavoured-milk/pre-mixed vodka drinks?  Exactly what the hell is going on here?

Road trip?  What? ... now? ... at this age? 

Oh right.  Yeah, New Zealand ... North Island ... just me (no mates), smokin' hot Mrs Donkey (tan and denim, but a bit light-on in the bikini-top department – mind you, Wellington was only 2 degrees in the sun), Hambones strapped into the child safety seat in the back (no guitar, no cushions ... barely enough room as it is for the bairn and a folded-up porta-cot) and the boot of the respectably suburban Epica (a far cry from the Kingswood aesthetic) full to bursting with suitcases, stroller and jars of baby food (not a chilled beer or aorta-blocking sausage in sight). 

Road trips have indeed changed since I was a young buck hitting the road full of adventurous anticipation ... or at least since I was a young, luckless, awkward, acne-ridden virgin, sitting down in front of the TV and watching advertisements featuring beautiful young things looking cool and sexy at the beach and on country roads up and down the east coast, and realising the closest I was gonna get to that lifestyle was buying a carton of chocolate milk and drinking it on the bonnet of Dad's station wagon.  But I digress ... New Zealand.

New Zealand?  What would I wanna go there for?  It's exactly the same as here, only thirty years behind.  Let's get this straight - I grew-up in the outer suburbs in the 1980s, and I've spent the last thirty years decisively getting as far away from it as I could, both in time and space.  So why the hell would I want to return to orange Laminex tables, mission-brown carpet tiles, culinary home delights such as "beef and noodles", vegetables boiled to denture-friendly mush and tinned "two-fruits" for desert, or for that formal family occasion, the local "Chinese" specialising in sweet and sour pork, prawn toast and steamed dim sims (considerably more exotic than their less-authentic, fried compatriots available from the fish 'n' chip shop next door).

And while we're at it, I have to say that nostalgics are definitely the stereotype which I find the most irritating (next to New Zealanders, of course).  They bang on and on about milk bottles, 6-o'clock closing, hot chips served in newspaper and about how everything was simple, and tasted better and was cheaper "back in the old days".  How bloody ridiculous?!  Who wants to wake up at 5am every day to the sound of some arthritic old bastard with a smoker's cough tinkling bottles of curdled, unpasteurised milk outside your front door, or to rush like an idiot after work on a Friday to buy bread from the shops before they close for the weekend, or to have permanently tattooed hands and tongue from the combination of scalding chip-grease and lead-based newspaper ink?  Nostalgics are dishonest scumbags who can be annoyingly self righteous as much as they like, smug in the knowledge that no one will ever be able to call them on their wistful reminiscences because no one ever wants to go back there ... 'cause it was shit!  So again I ask the question ... why would anyone want to go to New Zealand?

But as is so often the case, despite my concerns at the idea, my machismo behaved true-to-form and I quickly caved to Mrs Donkey's "suggestion" that a trip to New Zealand to catch-up with some long lost friends would be just what we needed.  So one lovely, warm, spring afternoon, we set off in blinding sunlight for bleak, bleak Wellington, where the sky sits two inches above your head, where the shrieking rain falls sideways and where the trees don't sway in the breeze; they shatter in the sleet.  "Urgh", my stomach sank, "who'd live here?".

The answer to that is our good friends, E, J and G, who were waiting excitedly for us in the arrivals hall, their thick woollen coats, scarves and beanies a comical contrast to our shorts, t-shirts and chattering blue knees.  But their embraces went some way to warding off the forbidding chill as we headed off to see what this country was all about.

However, as would become a reliable feature of our New Zealand road trip, there were delays.  Donkey had been defeated in yet another round of persuasion from Mrs D and had forked-out a hundred kiwi dollars for a so-called "NeverLost" navigation device.  Unfortunately, the helpful instructions don't start until you can get the thing switched on, so we sat in the airport car-park for an hour with the howling wind threatening to blow the car into the adjacent concrete wall (like so many in NZ, decorated with a local artist's lame attempt at a life-sized scene from Lord of the Rings) plugging chords into various sockets and pressing buttons here and there to try to get the thing started. 

Upon achieving success, we started out on the highway towards the city.  In days to come, this device would signal a new era of ease and argument-free road travel, but during that first twenty minutes on Wellington's hectic motorways, our enthusiasm for GPS technology was dampened by Pythagorean feats of concentration in order to decipher the irritatingly grating whine of the Kiwi computer geek's wet-dream - a digitally-generated, sexy female voice with an accent straight out of West Christchurch; "Orr yup, Baybee, tiern luft ut mai luft nupple.  Orr yup, thut's ut.  Thut's toatully Choice, Bug Boy!".

By the time we rounded the point into Oriental Bay, however, things were starting to look a little more promising.  The sun was shooting down through the clouds in gorgeous, golden shafts onto the silver water, and a hip, cafe-lined promenade wound along the shore, along which, despite the wind, people lounged at tables mounted with tantalising, steaming mugs and glasses of chilled white wine.

By the time we'd made it to the hotel, I had passed a large proportion of the 17,000 cafes which contribute to Wellington's reputation as having more coffee outlets per capita than New York.  Add to that a tonne of cool-looking bars and restaurants, and our trip was starting to look up – perhaps New Zealand wasn't quite the 80s suburban throwback I'd been expecting. 

But tasting some of this coffee – the real proof of a nation's developing status – would have to wait just that little longer 'cause breakfast was near E, J and G's digs in Lyall Bay, and to get there, we were forced to get all Lord of the Rings and "...journey beside the silver bay before passing through the dark tunnel beneath the Mountain of the Old Queen, and there you will find the Bay of Gold".  Honestly, New Zealand, the sooner you get over this Peter Jackson crap, the better for all of us – call it what you like, but Mt Victoria is merely a hill, and a road over the top would have been a piece of piss – alright, Im just sayin'. 

While not quite golden, Lyall Bay was very pretty, and we wandered through its lazy streets, past white-painted, weather-board dairies which could well have passed for the suburbs in 1985, down to a rickety-old boat house with beaten-up, peeling wooden walls reflecting a century of sand-blasting, au naturel.  Definitely not the most promising locale for a decent feed, but my casual, and (let's face it) hilarious enquiries of our friends about where a bloke could get some smoked kippers for breakky, "Just like back in the Ol' Country" were being met with daggers from Mrs D, so I decided to put a sock in it and see what New Zealand was going to serve-up.

The building's forbidding exterior was merely a mask for what we found upstairs, however; a bright, warm, furious cacophony of rushing waiting staff weaving through laughing crowds of über cool Wellingtonians packed into tables, benches and onto bar stools as the hissing shoots of steam from the espresso machine and the shriek of frying bacon punctuated the gut-trembling bass of the Kiwi dub booming out over the sound system.  Everyone was happy and chatting to each other, and even the cheerful staff seemed in on the joke.

But the real winner for Donkey was not so much the convivial air, but rather what was being lumbered across the floor in shiny white crockery, and landing in front of the salivating sophisticates; possibly the finest, punchiest organic coffee this increasingly sheepish chump had ever tasted, followed immediately by Martian-transport-sized plates of tasty, organic, eggy goodness atop thick, sourdough toast, plump, juicy baked tomatoes and garlic-bloated mushrooms, with mouth-bashing basil pesto on the side.

By now ol' Donkey was supplementing this fine fare with a considerable serving of humble pie, and while this would have convinced a better man to re-assess his perceptions about what to expect from New Zealand, it should be understood that there are few lumbering hulks more difficult to rein-in than the irrationality of an egomaniac trying to avoid embarrassment.  Sure, others might have suggested that the throng of hip and the platefuls of yum in the room were undeniable proof of a progressive, culinary culture, and yet my ill-placed dogma continued, "But this might have been just a bit of luck; and perhaps E, J and G have deliberately guided us to the best place in the city for our first feed". 

More coffee was going to be required before any definitive conclusions could be drawn ... and beer ... wine'd be good, too.  Ice cream anyone?  Yeah.  I'm no soft target to be won over with a single, outstanding breakfast.  I grew up in the suburbs in the 80s.  I know what I'm in for ... let's get out of this funky cafe ... it's time to check out the real New Zealand.

Next stop ... the 'Real' Wellington.

Donkey's expectations of modern-day New Zealand ... stay logged-in to find out just how canny he is.  Pic:  http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jdumas/berendo/berenfot.html

Undercover Donkey

There's this gawd-awful show on the tele at the moment called Undercover Boss, whereby some corporate high-flyer dons the company duds and goes and stands alongside his unknowing minions at the cash register, or behind the wheel, or digging ditches (not, I notice, cleaning toilets!).  I must confess I haven't watched this show, but judging by the ads, it seems that each episode ends up as a heart-warming, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking sob-fest as the Boss' ice-cold, ass-kicking corporate drive is melted in the face of the hard-luck stories and sheer anguish of his employees, with their terminally-ill kiddies, their animal shelters and their community service to struggling migrants.  Big Boss gets a free lesson in the "real values of humanity", and proceeds to handover cash and hand-out promotions as reward for their previously unrecognised, selflessness.

Honestly Channel 10, as if The 7PM Project wasn't bad enough!

Anyway, although not the boss of anyone or anything (and for good reason), I have recently found myself as Undercover Donkey in my workplace, but the only tears being jerked on this occasion were my own tears of excruciating pain and/or embarrassment.

I work on a hospital campus, and although I'm pretty far removed from the patients during my work day (again, for very good reason), I do skip-along to the horrors of the hospital cafeteria for lunch most days.  Now aside from the absolutely disgusting food that is served-up, the trouble with having lunch at a hospital caf is that you're sitting down to a plate of greasy, oily, barely-edible fare with a bunch of people carrying just about every communicable disease known to ape and man.

And the thing about hospital patients sitting down to a feed beside or across the table from you is that they're usually "wearing" hospital garments.  Why the inverted commas, I hear you ask?  Well because the thing about hospital garments is that ... well, they just aren't that conducive to being "worn".

Take the old man in the wheelchair who sat opposite me today.  He was attired in a pair of hospital-issue, one-size-fits-all pyjama pants – you know, the ones with the massive fly that leaves his Old Fella hanging out for all to admire.  I'm telling you, a sight like that can really put you off your rather limp, hospital cafeteria bratwurst!

And the same goes for those poor folk who come down from the wards wearing nothing but one of those white hospital gowns that "do up" at the back (inverted commas again, as there's a lot of space between those tie-up straps).  So again, try tucking into your hospital cafeteria carpaccio when some homeless-looking man's hairy arse-crack is winking at you through the substantial chink in the starched, white curtains!

Like most aspects of the public hospital system, one finds oneself coping with these kinds of horrors with humorous attacks on the kinds of people these semi-brain dead patients must be to get around in such an undignified fashion.

But then, I became one ... twice!  And I soon learned that their lack of dignity is not self-generated, but rather a dastardly bi-product of a cruel, uncaring public hospital system.

The first time I experienced this was during the birth of Lil' Hambones.  When Mrs Donkey was kitted-up in smart-looking, green, ER-type hospital scrubs and sent off to theatre, I was thrown a pair of white overalls by a midwife and told (with a barely-concealed smirk) that they were one-size-fits-all. 

Uh oh!  That phrase again ... one of two, standard features of all hospital-issue attire ... the other being that said attire can't be done-up.  So there I stood, in a tight, white, full-body suit, successfully parting my testicles in the kind of camel toe you'd expect to see on a deformed camel with a congenital, cleft toe, and just above these separated global hemispheres, the suit opened out, right to my shoulders!  Honestly, I looked like a cross between a young Sean Connery and Borat in his mankini.

"You're taking this piss!", I remarked to the midwife in a quivering falsetto, to which the sadistic bitch giggled that it was all they had and we had better get to theatre immediately.  T'was a good thing that the hoary old chestnuts had done their work, for they mayn't be the same again after the birth of Lil' Hambones.

And then again this week, I became Undercover Donkey, and again I came to have my heart softened towards my fellow demented, semi-clad diners.  This time I was heading back to theatre to have the scar left over from the removal of my festering alien parasite removed.  By the time I got to theatre, I was delusional from not having eaten (or more to the point, not having drunk coffee) for about twenty hours, so I didn't really take much notice of what they dressed me in before sending me off to the knife.

But when I awoke afterwards, with the usual early morning, post-slumber, anatomical male processes unfolding downstairs, I was mortified to discover that the smiling, caring, and not-unattractive recovery nurse by my side had been witness to the whole depraved scene thanks to my having been attired in hospital-issue, so-called "disposable underpants" which when adorned, being one-size-fits-all, was tantamount to wearing a tube of stretched, translucent, elastic gauze.

So no heart-warming, gut-wrenching story from this Undercover Donkey!  These hospital linen services are completely taking the piss!  It's a breach of patient dignity ... a breach of human-bloody-rights!  As they say in the States, I'm taking this all the way to City Hall! 

These old folk in big pyjama pants deserve better! 

These homeless folk in poorly-fastened gowns deserve better! 

And these recovery nurses definitely deserve better! 

It's time to take a stand against this blatant disregard for patients' dignity.  C'mon Julia Gillard.  C'mon Barak Obama.  C'mon Ban Ki-moon.  Give us zips!  Give us Velcro!  Give us buttons!  And please, give us something in our size!

Bae mi laek fo drinkem wan fala cofi no moa

I’d not be the first to remark that Melbourne’s obsession with coffee seems to be getting a little out of hand.  T’was not all that long ago that, Lygon Street aside, if you wanted an espresso coffee, you’d have to go to one of those special Milk Bars (the ones with the somewhat perplexing, “Delicatessen” sign out the front), and even then it was only for a cappuccino or a flat white.  But now, especially in Melbourne’s Central Business District, you can’t turn around without some semi-trained dick with a portable espresso cart shooting a spray of steam in your ear, or without seeing jittery, ipod-ed students jumping about with a bucket full of latte in hand.

Of course, the rise of the espresso culture is proportional to the number of times a week one is subjected to one’s co-worker casually remarking (at 20,000 decibels across the open-plan office) to their nearest colleague, “Oh, I just can’t function without my morning coffee”.

Oh, pah-leez! Won’t you people just fuck off and leave the rest of us in peace?!  It’s just coffee you’re drinking – a legal, and very minor stimulant.  You’re not shooting-up heroin; it ain’t acid; it ain’t ice and it ain’t the ol’ nose-candy.  It’s coffee … and besides, you drink it with a pint of warm milk anyway!  So please stop carrying-on like the tough kid from down the road whose showing off to his BMX-riding mates with the pack of Alpine Lights he’s bought with the two bucks he’s nicked out of his Mum’s purse*, “What, this?  Nah, this is nothin’.  I smoke ‘em wiv me ol’ man all the time – don’t you?”.

This attention-grabbing, loudly publicized, faux-obsession with a steamy-hot beverage is not impressive; it just gives the rest of us the shits.  If these self-absorbed show-ponies would just pull their heads out of their own arses for a minute and look around, they’d notice that while they’ve been bragging about how “I can easily manage three before lunch time”, more than half of their colleagues, at any time of the day, have beneath their desk an over-flowing bin of stinking, slowly-congealing empty paper cups.

Like most obsessive types, we keep our habits to ourselves … even try to cover it up with unnecessary, old-growth-forest-destroying HP laser-printer test pages.  We are the truly obsessed, and frankly, we find your ridiculous theatrics offensive.

Now right from the outset, I wanna make it clear.  While I might be a tad on edge most of the time, my relationship with coffee is one of obsession, not addiction.  I … love … the … stuff!  And although this post might be tantamount to shouting across the office that “I just can’t start the day without my morning coffee”, it’s definitely different because I’m pretty sure no one is listening … and besides, it’s not even true … I don’t think.

OK, maybe it’s a bit true.  There could be something to be said for the fact that these days I actually like getting up early-ish on the weekend.  I have to admit that while there are two reasons for this, only one of them is to play with Hambones.  The other is to take my cheap, piece-of-shit espresso machine, and to bash it and squeeze it and gently rub it and squash it and rock it back-and-forwards and then hug it in an attempt to churn out the best possible, double-strength long black money can’t buy … and I don’t mind boasting that together we consistently produce the most exquisite thing to ever come out of such an abusive relationship.

Of course, one doesn’t just do this on the weekend … no, this is Donkey’s de rigueur start to any given day, so I’ve got the jump on my loud-mouthed colleagues long before they’ve even thought about interrupting the rest of us.  And this little morning pleasure of mine; both the drinking and the creation of the special brew, certainly keeps me going well enough until I arrive at my desk at 7.45, when I start looking around for something to drink.  A coffee’d be good, but from where?

Who else will take the kind of care I do?  Who else will obsess over finding, and then sticking to the right beans, the right roaster, the right grind, the right temperature (room and water)?  Who else will constantly worry about whether or not he’s got enough stock to get you through the weekend; who’s concerned about having enough cups on the warmer; about having all the various tamps, spoons, jugs, dirty sponges, clean sponges on hand?  Who else sees making a cup of coffee as a creation?

It’s not easy to choose.  As I mentioned, every cashed-up bogan within a hundred miles of the city these days reckons they’re obsessed with coffee, “and it has to be expresso” (sic), so as a result, every single food outlet, milk bar, convenience store, train platform, pub, street corner, law firm lobby, hospital, book shop - even McDonalds - bashes out lattes and cappuccinos at an incredible rate, and for a pretty reasonable price.  But that’s not to say they’re any good.

Now I don’t mind paying up to three dollars for a decent cuppa, but I will object to having to do so for a tasteless cup of brown water, or worse yet, the steaming mug of what I got served-up last week for the princely sum of $3.30, which looked and tasted as though a diarrheal-ridden Biafran kiddie had taken a squat over a porcelain cup.

This place was supposedly French, named after it’s proprietor, Jacque M, and located in a pretty trendy part of town.  Knowing what we all do about the French and their fastidious attention to fine dining, I thought I was probably in safe barista territory, but I should have known something was up when, as I waited for my long black, he answered the phone with, “Yeah, G’Day this is Jack Mole-ey-nooks … orr, how are ya, mate?”.

Fortunately the French redeemed themselves today … or, perhaps more correctly, some 100 years ago, when they brought culinary discretion to the South Pacific.  Today I crossed a dusty track in a five-ute, three-building, two-boat provincial town on a remote southern island in Vanuatu, and ducked-into a tin shack where I quaffed a cup of perhaps the finest, organic, locally grown and roasted espresso I’d ever sent south.  Vive la France – and jam it, Starbucks!

* - yeah, yeah, two dollars for a pack of fags … I know, I’m showing my age.

This cuppa saved my life.  Pic: http://tannacoffee.com/