More on the rowing fiasco (see Row, Row, Row Your Boat). This is worth reading: The Bladder At least it's funny.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Thursday, August 26, 2004
My First Snake
Wandering down to Diggers Beach this afternoon, I was stopped by an elderly neighbour on his way home from his daily stroll. "Want to see a beautiful bit of local wildlife?" he asked. I said I did, reasoning that it was bound to be something exotic or deadly, or possibly both. He directed me to the rubbish bins at the far end of the car park where he told me I'd find a carpet snake. "Don't hurt him," he called after me. "He won't hurt you."
And there he was, elegantly draped over the stainless steel post between the two bins, about five feet long and brown, with yellow and black markings. His tail was hidden under several coils on top of the post, most of his body hanging down before making a sharp u-turn so his neck and slender head were pointing upward. He was completely motionless, perhaps because the afternoon had turned cool. They're a kind of python and therefore harmless unless you happen to be a small rodent or bird, I suppose.
And there he was, elegantly draped over the stainless steel post between the two bins, about five feet long and brown, with yellow and black markings. His tail was hidden under several coils on top of the post, most of his body hanging down before making a sharp u-turn so his neck and slender head were pointing upward. He was completely motionless, perhaps because the afternoon had turned cool. They're a kind of python and therefore harmless unless you happen to be a small rodent or bird, I suppose.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Row, Row, Row Your Boat.....
You’ll not be surprised to hear that the Australian media is in the grip of Olympic fever. I assume it’s the same back in the UK but, since long before the Sydney games, the Australians have been plotting how to turn themselves into the world’s greatest sporting nation, despite the fact that there’s only 20 million of them (see previous posting - Sink or Swim).
Sport in general, and the Olympics in particular, offers a great opportunity for celebrating two much-prized qualities, toughness and mate-ship, the latter embracing women as well as men, at least in sport. So you can perhaps imagine the horror when one of the members of the women’s rowing eight, well, just stopped rowing. And that when they were in contention for gold. Sally Robbins says she was overcome by exhaustion, translated by the media into losing her bottle, giving up, and betraying her team-mates. Yes, her team-mates were apparently angry. According to Sally, some of them immediately suggested that she might be more comfortable in the water, rather than in the boat, and offered to help her move, though this morning‘s bulletins merely said that her team-mates “expressed disappointment“ with her. I bet they did.
Luckily for Sally, she’s not the only one. There was some scathing coverage of Paula Radcliffe’s withdrawal from the marathon. Not only was she the race favourite, but she’s also British, which is added cause for schadenfreude. There’s a big debate about whether Australia should align itself, culturally and politically, with south-east Asia, New Zealand or America but they seem to have decided they’ve finished with Britain. As one Australian academic pointed out in another context, this country was founded on rejection by Britain. So this morning’s Daily Telegraph (no resemblance to the British one) pointed out that the women all ran the same course, in the same heat, including the same hills, and lots of them managed to finish. But not Paula.
I don’t think anyone but the athletes themselves understand the pressure of preparing for, and competing in, something like the Olympics. Amateur athletes who have run or cycled themselves to a pain-racked standstill will have some inkling but at least they can humiliate themselves more or less in private. But if there’s one group that’s not qualified to castigate Sally and Paula (and thank goodness it wasn’t a bloke who packed) surely it’s journalists. Newsrooms are inhabited by some of the least fit and healthy people on earth and while you can, I think, comment fairly on something like politics by observing and associating with politicians, I don’t think you can begin to accuse athletes of moral failure unless you’ve felt some of their pain personally. And perhaps not even then.
This is not confined to the Australian media, of course. I once tried to commission some coverage for one of my programmes about the Snowdonia Marathon , only to be rejected by the sports department on the grounds that “it wasn’t a proper race.” This verdict was delivered by someone so over-weight and out of condition that I suspected him of using a golf-buggy to move between his office and the newsroom. I consoled myself with a personal vision of the agonies this person would suffer if, by some miracle, he ever managed to drag his bulk around the course. I’d run the race myself so came up with some very vivid and satisfying pictures and organised my own coverage.
PS On a happier note, the rainbow lorikeets have returned to the garden after the winter. They’re as rowdy and acrobatic as ever and they’re very welcome.
Sport in general, and the Olympics in particular, offers a great opportunity for celebrating two much-prized qualities, toughness and mate-ship, the latter embracing women as well as men, at least in sport. So you can perhaps imagine the horror when one of the members of the women’s rowing eight, well, just stopped rowing. And that when they were in contention for gold. Sally Robbins says she was overcome by exhaustion, translated by the media into losing her bottle, giving up, and betraying her team-mates. Yes, her team-mates were apparently angry. According to Sally, some of them immediately suggested that she might be more comfortable in the water, rather than in the boat, and offered to help her move, though this morning‘s bulletins merely said that her team-mates “expressed disappointment“ with her. I bet they did.
Luckily for Sally, she’s not the only one. There was some scathing coverage of Paula Radcliffe’s withdrawal from the marathon. Not only was she the race favourite, but she’s also British, which is added cause for schadenfreude. There’s a big debate about whether Australia should align itself, culturally and politically, with south-east Asia, New Zealand or America but they seem to have decided they’ve finished with Britain. As one Australian academic pointed out in another context, this country was founded on rejection by Britain. So this morning’s Daily Telegraph (no resemblance to the British one) pointed out that the women all ran the same course, in the same heat, including the same hills, and lots of them managed to finish. But not Paula.
I don’t think anyone but the athletes themselves understand the pressure of preparing for, and competing in, something like the Olympics. Amateur athletes who have run or cycled themselves to a pain-racked standstill will have some inkling but at least they can humiliate themselves more or less in private. But if there’s one group that’s not qualified to castigate Sally and Paula (and thank goodness it wasn’t a bloke who packed) surely it’s journalists. Newsrooms are inhabited by some of the least fit and healthy people on earth and while you can, I think, comment fairly on something like politics by observing and associating with politicians, I don’t think you can begin to accuse athletes of moral failure unless you’ve felt some of their pain personally. And perhaps not even then.
This is not confined to the Australian media, of course. I once tried to commission some coverage for one of my programmes about the Snowdonia Marathon , only to be rejected by the sports department on the grounds that “it wasn’t a proper race.” This verdict was delivered by someone so over-weight and out of condition that I suspected him of using a golf-buggy to move between his office and the newsroom. I consoled myself with a personal vision of the agonies this person would suffer if, by some miracle, he ever managed to drag his bulk around the course. I’d run the race myself so came up with some very vivid and satisfying pictures and organised my own coverage.
PS On a happier note, the rainbow lorikeets have returned to the garden after the winter. They’re as rowdy and acrobatic as ever and they’re very welcome.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Spiders Not That Bad Either - Official
Hope you're all coming to terms with sharks after the posting below and I can now tell you that one of the other great lurking threats in Australian life, spiders, are not all they're cracked up to be either.
"Experts" ie two doctors, one from Australia and one from California, say most pose no threat to humans and are scapegoats for flesh-eating lesions. "Diagnosis of a spider bite continues to be based on mainly on suspicion and fear of spiders, and diagnosis of a chronic ulcer in stories of suspected spider bites causing devastating necrotic fasciitis (flesh eating disease)", they say.
Apparently, the wolf spider and the white-tail spider are the main species unjustly blamed, usually becuase they just happened to be hanging around when some poor person's flesh started eating itself. And in an extension of the sharks versus very big lorries analogy, they point out there have been only 26 deaths from spiders here in Australia in the past century whereas 1,183 people died in motor accidents in 2001.
Thought you should know. But my visiting son, Iwan, still refuses to share the small downstairs toilet with the burly Huntsman that crept in the other day.
More shark news - The Coffs Harbour Advocate reports today that a spearfisherman from Byron Bay was the centre of a media bidding war after being attacked by a grey nurse shark. The Advocate obviously didn't bid high enough so I can't tell you what happened but it have a jolly picture of the fisherman on his hospital bed with what seems to be one-and-a-half legs.
"Experts" ie two doctors, one from Australia and one from California, say most pose no threat to humans and are scapegoats for flesh-eating lesions. "Diagnosis of a spider bite continues to be based on mainly on suspicion and fear of spiders, and diagnosis of a chronic ulcer in stories of suspected spider bites causing devastating necrotic fasciitis (flesh eating disease)", they say.
Apparently, the wolf spider and the white-tail spider are the main species unjustly blamed, usually becuase they just happened to be hanging around when some poor person's flesh started eating itself. And in an extension of the sharks versus very big lorries analogy, they point out there have been only 26 deaths from spiders here in Australia in the past century whereas 1,183 people died in motor accidents in 2001.
Thought you should know. But my visiting son, Iwan, still refuses to share the small downstairs toilet with the burly Huntsman that crept in the other day.
More shark news - The Coffs Harbour Advocate reports today that a spearfisherman from Byron Bay was the centre of a media bidding war after being attacked by a grey nurse shark. The Advocate obviously didn't bid high enough so I can't tell you what happened but it have a jolly picture of the fisherman on his hospital bed with what seems to be one-and-a-half legs.
Friday, August 06, 2004
Shark tales
Just back from a trip to Sydney, this time to show Iwan the sights, which have to include the wonderful Aquarium. There you not only get to see everything from seadragons to the massive Murray cod, but also a group of large sharks.
Visitors can walk through glass tubes in the huge tank they share with sting rays, turtles and presumably nervous fish and it’s probably the only chance you’ll get to appreciate their muscularity, the malevolence of their eyes and the horror of their rows of inward-pointing teeth and emerge with all your flesh.
Even though they spend so much time in the water, people here are pretty relaxed about sharks. As one surfer with all his limbs said to me: “Yes, there are sharks out there but there are also very large trucks on the highway which can do an equally good job of spoiling your day.” In fact, many of these road trains end up on their sides after mysteriously failing to take bends which have been bends on that bit of road for a very long time and therefore shouldn’t come as a surprise to any driver but that’s another matter.
Anyway, here are two sharks tales which say a lot about the Australian attitude to what David Attenborough would no doubt describe as “these complex and fascinating predators.”
Matt, a vet who lives near Coffs was pleased one morning to find only one other surfer in the water on his favourite beach so quickly made his way out to the break. After a while he noticed the other surfer leave the water and limp slowly up the path to the car park. A small crowd then gathered on the path, apparently watching Matt. Watching surfers is a pleasant and common pastime so he didn’t think anything of it.
When he’d had his fill, Matt left the water and made his way up the path toward the crowd. As he approached, one man came toward him and asked: “So you didn’t see the shark, then?”
“What shark?” Matt inquired.
“The one that bit that other guy.”
And, no, Matt tells me he didn’t feel particularly aggrieved that they hadn’t warned him. It’s all about perception of risk, apparently, and also quite amusing.
The other story was in several newspapers and therefore must be true. On a beach to the south of here, a surfer suddenly found a small shark firmly attached to his leg. Remaining calm, he left the water and tried to encourage the shark to let go but it wouldn’t. So he walked (rather awkwardly, no doubt) to his car and drove himself to the nearest surf life saving club. I’m assuming that all his mates were too busy surfing to take the wheel.
When he arrived, he told the lifeguards of his predicament (“excuse me, mate, I’ve got a shark stuck on my leg”) and, when they stopped laughing, they put him and the shark in a freshwater shower and the shark finally let go. The papers were silent on the fate of the shark but I’m also assuming that they then cooked and ate it. That would seem about right.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
