Remember when smoking was an ice-breaker?

Something precious was lost when the world stopped smoking.

A tradition of "offering" was stolen from the tentative processes of social overtures.

The proffering of a cigarette packet, one ciggie thoughtfully pulled forth, and the single question "cigarette?" could break the ice in countless contexts. Once upon a time.

It was an excuse to start a conversation, a way to bring an outsider into a circle, a pick-up line, an outreach, a kindness...

It had partner contact lines in "do you have a light?" or "care for a light?" - the swish of a match on red phosphorus, the classy click of a Zippo, the sharing of a living flame. And people came together, initiating further exchanges under an ease of inhaled smoke.

Those were the days.

People could express themselves with their style of smoking - assert an urbane charm or myriad elements of mood and character. A flourish. A toss of the head. An agitated ashing.

Now we are all clean smoke-free, we have forgotten about the old mores.

The anti-smoking fanatics have gone so far as to erase cigarettes from photos and films, even from the period flavor of celebrated theatre pieces. Noel Coward plays lose a lot when the nuance of smoking is cut from the action - since it IS the action. Suddenly, where a character smoked, the character now does nothing. In one production, I noted he was provided with chewing gum in lieu of a cigarette. Hardly Noel Coward, darlings.

And when they do make token efforts to incorporate the culture of the cigarette into period theatre pieces, the tender little actors will light a cigarette, take a lightning-fast suck, not inhaling but blowing fast in a desperate puff and then stubbing the cigarette out furiously. Token smokin'. It is poor form since it does not represent the history or the character. And, for heaven's sake, no true smoker would ever butt out a freshly-lit cigarette.

But there it all is. History sabotaged by reformist zeal.

Meanwhile, what is there to replace the old social icebreaker of the cigarette? One television program introduced an eccentric character offering Nicorettes to people. Nice comment on the lost custom. I wonder how many viewers saw the irony? Too few, since we fast are entering the "before my time" generation made up of those who have only ever seen deadbeats and villains with a smoke in hand. That image has been elevated as part of the anti-smoking propaganda.

Not that I am espousing smoking. I am among the sturdy formers who can't stand the smell or taste.

I am simply reflecting on a social crutch of yore. It was an invidious habit, but it burned the flame of friendship and conviviality and was a shared ritual which has found no peer.

May I offer you a toothpick?

Clockwork Orange is on steriods

It is so easy to feel enveloped in the comfort zone. I think of my narrow world - gentle home life amid educated people, theatre, looking forward to a good white wine at the end of the day, the pleasure of cooking wholesome and interesting food...
It is a fortunate world.
But it must not be blinkered.
The world is changing. Demographics is changing. Even here in this pleasant city of a million, the status quo is shifting.

Even if only from time-to-time, we really must turn our minds to the horror stories of other lives, of kids on crime sprees because they have squalid and unloving home lives - drunks, dropouts and addicts as their role models.
More and more we have created a whole society of people who have never worked. Never held a job at all. Just been supported by the system and now believes that this is the only way and, further, that this is an entitlement which should be providing rather better income and standard of living, rather more like that of the people who work.
They are arising as a restless, angry and growing underclass - now boosted by immigration policies of recent years.
We are surrounded by a generation of idle people, bored, lacking in interests, unable to find distraction between the covers of a book or in tending a garden or helping others. They are the market for violent video games and porn websites.

Teachers despair, unable to control them, influence them. Teachers have breakdowns. Fewer people want to be teachers because of them.
Education is the solution - but it has failed.
Clockwork Orange is on steriods.

I think of the power of those people not only in disrupting and undermining urban life in an immediate physical and cultural sense but also in being able to wield political clout. They vote.

I simply don't know what to do about this alarming growth. I see it is an obstacle to saving the environment, to the economy even to peace.

Ignorance is a very, very scary enemy.

Where is that sand? I want to bury my head.

Calm alarm - one of the greatest inventions

"Not a morning person" doesn't begin to cover it.
Or it didn't once.
That was my mantra.

All has changed. Technology has made me a morning person.

I wake up softly these days, gently roused by sweet sounds.

No longer am I shocked into consciousness by strident, jangling, aggressive, head-hammering clocks.
Nope, it's my handy mobile phone.
My darling iPhone. Before that it was my Nokia.

The pretty wake-up calls available on the mobile phone are one of the significant inventions of our time.
For all the great technological advances of our time, the way in which mobile phones have transformed wake-up calls would seem to have been the least appreciated.
I wonder has anyone really contemplated how many marital arguments did not happen because couples were not jangled into the new day? How many bosses did not bite the heads of employees because their wake-up was non-aggressive?
What larger differences may there be in our world when people's wakening is greeted by beauty instead of abrasive alarm?

I know that my cellphone alarm has absolutely improved the way I meet the day.
I wake up relaxed - not rattled into awareness. I hear the gentle sounds and my mind reaches out, at first wondering as one does out of sleep, and then identifying this as the tune of the dawn.

It is years since I had to wake up just to grasp out and stop the noise, to kill the ugly bell.
And I realise that a whole new lucky world will have known nothing other than cellphone wakeup calls - and perhaps may be a better community for it.

Whoever thought of programming harmonious wake-ups into cellphone technology might well deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

Big Brothers and little brains.

Big Brother has started again in Australia and, despite our better judgement, we are all looking in on it and checking out the new housemates.
Once again, it is a celebration of the lowest common denominator - a selection of the most vapid and unpleasant people.

Why do we want to waste time in observing them showing off in front of the cameras, playing drama queen, brandishing ignorance as if it is an achievement, proving how the English language is now completely rooted because they have no goddamn idea of pronouns or tense...?

I suspect it is because we love to have people to hate.

Two days into BB and I want to get half the housemates out of the house. I squirm with loathing and contempt. I want them to suffer. I want them brought down to size.

Perhaps I really want the makers of BB to suffer, too - since they have gradually manipulated a good concept and turned it into trash TV, pandering to a lewd, sub-brain demographic which has never read a newspaper let alone a book.

The producers have made an art form of finding people of that very ilk and promise them celebrity based on exposure of those very qualities. They seek the low, they exploit the low - and the rewards are high.

On so many levels, it is deeply demoralising. A hateful reflection on the values and aspirations of our society.

It certainly brings out the very worst in me.

And still I turn it on.

The obscene power of tradesmen

The rich think they hold the power.
Once it was so.
These days, it is the tradesmen who hold the power.
It does not matter how rich you are, if a tradesman refuses to come and install your airconditioner or hot water service, then you have to go without. Until they are ready to give you some of their time, you are at their mercy.
Tradesmen can decide if you are to be cool in the heatwave or if you are going to have mud instead of cement in the drive, if your leaky roof keeps dripping, if your dishwasher is fixable, if you are going to get sharp TV reception, a floor polished or a carpet laid, a window repaired or replaced, a door fitted...
It is all done on their time, not yours.
Forget waiting for a doctor's appointment.
Doctors are a joy of accessibility compared to tradesmen.

How did this all come about. How did the tables turn so that tradesmen are the most powerful members of society?

Once upon a time, they were something of a lowly class -"blue collar" or "working class".
The management classes and professionals were the smug middle with the dynastic wealth and highly educated scoring "upper". Of course, these classes still were dependent upon the tradesmen. But, if one recalls the past of one's youth, not to mention the past as recorded in literature, they were a cap-tipping deferential class which sought to please those who employed them.

This has changed.
They could not give a damn whether you are pleased or not. They are indifferent as to how long they keep you waiting. They treat those who seek to use their services with sublime contempt - sometimes not bothering to turn up at all.
Certainly they are indifferent to returning phone calls.
What they are calling is the tune.

Why is this?
Perhaps because tradesmen are now in short supply.
The old apprentice traditions fizzled somewhere along the way. Meanwhile, families in the trades wanted something better for their children - university educations.

Even in trade schools, the traditional trades are out of fashion. Kids would rather study computer programming than plumbing.
Who leaves school saying they want to follow their dad into plumbing? In a world where the class system has disintegrated, there is no longer a sense of fraternity in the trades.

The sort of people entering the trades are doing so perhaps grudgingly.
Hence their resentment of the people for whom they are then to work. Well, contempt really.
Tradesmen can name their price. On top of this, they can choose simply not to turn up to do the job.
They don't have to worry about losing business because they know that they are as rare as hen's teeth and they will never run out of work. There is a world of poeple prepared to pay whatever they ask, prepared to beg them to do a job, prepared to wait on their convenience...

Why am I pondering all this?
Well, I may have moved house over a month ago had it not been for the tradesmen who have not turned up, who have put off jobs, who have not been accountable...
I am still waiting. I am not moved.

Oh yes, instead of being angry, I am just a grovelling supplicant, like everyone else.
One can't afford to be impatient with a tradesman let alone rude. They are in control. They are masters of our destiny. They might not be the upper class but they have the upper hand.

The state of the states

Unlike America, Australia has always been in some denial about the differences in character and attitude between the states. While America is proud of the contrast between, say, New York and California or Georgia and Vermont, we have been a bit secretive about state contrasts - seeing it as some sort of dirty family business. The feelings between Australian states have not been exactly affectionate.

Hence, the immense schadenfreude we now feel at the Sydney Morning Herald's report of English psychologist and author Oliver James's analysis of the Australian states. He has said the things that we mutter to each other but dare not declaim. He has said that Sydney is the most vacuous city of superficial people obsessed with real estate, personal prestige and appearance.
The "Dolly Parton" of Australian cities!

He has hit the nail on the head. He has not mentioned, because he may not have known, that Sydney also produces the most astonishingly arrogant attitude towards the rest of Australia - a sense of absolute superiority. It would eliminate the other states completely, if it could. If it cannot ignore them, it will demean them. It is all-wonderful, all-powerful, it is simply all.
We call it "Sydneycentricity" here in the south.

Sydney has created its own image of the other capital cities - none of them friendly. We, the arts capital, are always dubbed "the city of churches" and accused of a conservatism which does not apply. We are also dubbed a "poofter" city because of our emphasis on the arts.

Melbourne is the upstart, greedy city, in the Sydney view. If Sydney disdains Adelaide, it loathes Melbourne - a feeling that is reciprocated by Melbournians. Hobart and Perth? Well, they are not worthy of Sydney interest at all. They are so remote, they are country towns in the big city view of the country.
Now, of course, Sydneysiders are in a lather of indignation. They have been internationally exposed as the vain and vapid, materialistic drears that they are. All they have is more. More people and more money, more traffic and more tourist.
I've always described Sydney as a "blousey" city - like an overblown rose. It is showy, gorgeous and big.
Adelaide is the pink bud rose - delicate, pretty and rich with promise. If one was to continue the rose metaphor, Melbourne would be the yellow climber, Hobart the wild bramble and Perth the standard rose, staked tall and isolated, but lovely.

Sydney has dominated the country like a schoolyard bully (yes, changing metaphors) - and we have all cowered in our geographic corners, quietly seething resentment but not nationally disloyal enough to repay the rudeness. Certainly in Adelaide we have always known that we are the creative crucible of the country. We export brains and talent to the rest of the country - and the world. The more we lose, the more we make. Perth may have had the first art festival, but we are the Festival city - simply because, like Edinburgh, we were made for festivals. We have the cultured population and the physical dimensions to make arts festivals into all-embracing happenings. Our festivals are not just a program of events scattered around a vast area, as is the case with Sydney. They are a city coloured in the arts.

Melbourne, our nearest capital neighbour, is jealous and predatory - thieving what it can from Adelaide's events. I quite like Melbourne, but I find its inability to come up with its own ideas a bit tiresome. I find Melbourne's pathological loathing of Sydney most amusing, however. Melbourne wants to be what other cities are. It lies and contorts history, it steals and generally behaves rather badly.


Adelaide? Well, at a million people it is just the right size. It is small enough to have a sense of community but large enough to have a thriving metropolis. It has a vast stretch of superb beaches and lush, agriculturally productive hills - along with fertile wine and dairy valleys. We eat extremely well - living an enviable quality of life which is untrammelled by congestion. We are what they call "a lifestyle city". A gentle decadence prevails. We neither need nor want what Sydney has. Particularly its attitude.

So why haven't we blown the whistle on the ugliness of Australia's most beautiful city?
Perhaps it is because we have a population of only 21million versus the USA's 310 million that we have kept a loose sense of nationalism rather than state identification, allowing the most populous city to stake its claim as gateway to the country. Perhaps we simply don't want to wash our dirty linen in public.

It took a foreigner.