Friday on My Mind Archives - Page 23 of 31

Three cheers for volunteers

Firefighters Stephen Mitchell — Country Fire Service volunteers, photo by Stephen Mitchell https://flic.kr/p/sviX2

In the twilight hours of the Illawarra Folk Festival, the call went out for volunteers. Not those who had already put in the hours to pull off the biggest folk festival in New South Wales. No, this was an urgent call for paying punters staying over on Sunday night to donate 12 hours of their time on Monday for the pack-down. Those volunteering for this task would be rewarded with a full refund of their weekend ticket.

Most of Australia’s music festivals make heavy use of volunteers – (shortened in typical Aussie fashion to “vollies”). The logistics involved in training and managing 2,500 volunteers (Woodford Festival) or 1,300 (The National Folk Festival) is only one side to recruiting a (free) but willing workforce. The fact is there are very few paid positions behind the scenes at music festivals, big or small. Volunteers do the forward planning, the publicity, the volunteer co-ordinating and, once the festival has started, vollies are assigned tasks such as checking wristbands at entrances and exits, managing venues, MC’ing, helping find lost children, looking after artists, spreading straw on muddy patches and the never appreciated but vital task of collecting rubbish and removing it from the site. Volunteers invariably keep the toilets and showers clean and make sure there is plenty of toilet paper. (Except when other people come in behind them and make a mess).

Sometimes being a volunteer at a music festival can be really cool “I got to MC the main stage and actually shook Harry Manx’s hand”. Or “Kate wrote a smiley face on my plaster cast.”

Volunteering has long been a noble task where those who perform work for non-profit organisations and charities do it for no monetary reward, either in cash or kind. Festival volunteers at least get free tickets. In the case of Woodford, a season ticket with camping now costs close to $700, so that is a good inducement to offer one’s services. In return for a ticket, Woodford volunteers are required to put in five hours a day. If you do the math, volunteers are working for about $20 an hour (in kind) over the six-day festival.

That’s a pretty good deal for festival fans whose budgets do not stretch to paying for a full season ticket. (You might be rostered on somewhere else just when Kate Miller-Heidke is playing, but what the hell – she’ll probably write a song about it.)

Firefighters, lifeguards and emergency services

Circling out into the deeper water of volunteering in Australia, I found some statistics which gave me pause to worry about our youth unemployment rate. Close to six million Australians volunteers each put in an average of 135 hours a year. That’s 743 million hours of unpaid labour (per year). It makes you wonder.

Melanie Oppenheimer, chair of history at Flinders University, who has written books about volunteering, said in a 2015 co-authored article in The Conversation that the rate of volunteering has slipped from a 2010 high of 36%. An Australian Bureau of Statistics social survey found that 5.8 million Australians volunteered in 2014 – 31% of people aged 18 or over.

Why is it so?

A panel of academics headed by Flinders University has begun a three-year study to find out why volunteering appears to be in a long-term decline. They hope to find answers to these questions and more:

Are increasingly busy Australians finding it harder to prioritise volunteering as part of their lives?
Are we becoming more selfish as a nation and less inclined to help others?
Is volunteering “on the nose” with young people, the next generation of volunteers?
Does the decline in volunteering reflect the long, slow decline of rural Australia, where volunteering rates have always outstripped those of their city cousins?
Has population decline and an ageing population in these areas reduced the supply of willing and able-bodied volunteers?

Adelaide University’s Dr Lisel O’Dwyer has estimated the economic value of volunteering to Australia at $200 billion, using methodology which includes calculating the worth of lives saved by volunteer fire fighters, SES crews and life guards.

But she warned that a focus on the economic value of volunteering can be dangerous, and does not show the whole picture.

Work 70 hours a week for nothing – why not?

Volunteering has come in for a bit of criticism in the past few years, with unpaid internships (sometimes known as ‘work experience’) attracting world-wide opprobrium. Just google “interns and controversy” and you’ll wish you had never started.

There’s also been some media coverage of something dubbed “voluntourism” where predominantly young people can travel abroad and have adventures in exotic locations. The deal is usually food and accommodation in return for a set number of hours working for not-for-profit groups. You can do the legwork yourself, but beware, there are scammers out there all too ready to charge gullible youngsters a fee for finding them an unpaid job overseas.

While volunteers do not get paid for the work they do, local, state and federal governments treat them as part of the workforce. When you volunteer you are covered by workers’ compensation, public liability insurance and the same rules about discrimination and bullying in the workplace apply to volunteers as well.

The biggest exercise in recruiting and training volunteers was in 2000 for the Sydney Olympics, when 45,000 people said “yes” to the concept of being involved in an event that would put Australia on the global stage.

But volunteering is more often about small tasks not even identified as such, like staffing the tuckshop at your children’s school or mending shirts, shorts and skirts for the second-hand uniform shop.

Another star in heaven

Maleny Music Festival director Noel Gardner said even small festivals like the one staged in Maleny last August required 180 volunteers, all of whom were given a free pass in exchange for two shifts of three to four hours over the weekend.

“Festivals couldn’t work without their volunteers,” he said. “The only inducement apart from a free ticket is the joy of helping and perhaps an extra star in heaven.”

Gardner says volunteers often form a family-like bond and friendships are created and cemented year after year.

“I think we (humans) are at our best when we work together for a common cause.”

Friends of ours look after the co-ordinating of volunteers for just one Woodford event (the Fire Event and closing ceremony). Planning for the 120 volunteers needed for this event starts in August, and as our friend said, rarely does a day goes by without something needing to be done.

The upside is that by the time the festival starts, their job is done.

“Obviously we enjoy the tickets to the festival. But we also like the feeling of contributing to a festival we value, and enjoy being part of the organisation and seeing some of the behind-the-scenes planning.”

You, you and you – latrine duty!

Men of my generation probably had fathers like mine (with military experience in World War II). “Never volunteer for anything,” they’d say. Perhaps this is why I have done so little volunteering – car park attendant at the Maleny Wood Expo, MC at Woodford a few times, running a monthly folk club with She Who Only Got Mentioned in the Penultimate Paragraph.

Apart from that, I keep my head down. Evidently there are six million people out there who will do my share for me.

Bowie and the search for heroes

Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield (photo used with permission)

As I write, the overly-emotional social media tributes to David Bowie have attracted the satirists, lobbing hand grenades amongst the mourners. One which turned up on Facebook purported to be God choosing his “Rock God Supergroup” with Lemmy (from Motorhead) on bass, John Bradbury (The Specials) on drums, Bowie on vocals, and God on guitar (traipsing through a so-so version of Stairway to Heaven). There were other irreverent items, including a few mock tributes to rockers yet to leave the planet.

The legacy of our Golden Years

That aside, it is truly tragic that Bowie has died at 69, of cancer, with any amount of potential to keep on being creative and performing, as elder artists like Leonard Cohen, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart and Petula Clark have shown is possible. I was one of those “Oh yes, I know David Bowie…Major Tom – who doesn’t know Bowie?” But I never bought any of his records, never went to a live show, yet all of those wonderfully catchy tunes – often with one word titles, crept into my consciousness. Just yesterday She Who is in Charge of Camping Logistics asked me to name a few Bowie tunes, apart from Space Oddity. “Well, there was Heroes, ch-ch-ch-Changes, Sorrow, Rebel, Rebel, Golden Years and…(hums a few bars of Let’s Dance).”
“Oh, did he do that one too?”
Yes he did, 20-something albums and many other creative projects; the thin, pale Englishman kept on churning it out, along the way battling drug addiction and obviously getting past that and continuing to innovate.

Still writing about music

My esteemed former colleague Noel Mengel, who left The Courier-Mail in December after a 25-year career as one of the country’s most respected music writers, was prevailed upon to write a tribute.
As only someone with his depth of experience could do, Mengel wrote about Bowie’s first visit to Brisbane in 1978 where the massive stacks of speakers at Lang Park blasted out music at a volume that could be heard at Mt Coot-tha.
Noel recalled Russ Hinze, a former minister of the Bjelke-Petersen government castigating Bowie in The Telegraph: “These pop singers come out here to make a quick quid by disturbing our peace and tranquillity. That fact that he’s a Pommie as well wouldn’t help.”
There is a tangible connection between our emotional lives and popular music and the unexpected death of a prolific artist like Bowie triggers memories and moments.
It depends on what was top of the pops during your impressionable years. For Mengel, it was Space Oddity, which emerged in 1969 when he was 14; I was 21 and Bowie barely 22. I remember the song fondly, just as I remember watching those grainy black and white images of Neil Armstrong making his one giant leap for mankind.

Can you hear me?

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield made Space Oddity even more famous than it already was with his own version, sung while free-floating in a space station. The YouTube video has attracted more than 28 million views.
Bowie approved of the cover, saying it was one of the most poignant versions. If you have any doubts about Bowie’s musical acumen, pick up a guitar and try to learn that one. Good luck!

Certain songs snare a piece of our hearts as we travel through life. Perhaps it was the song popular at a time when you were first courting (olde speak for ‘going out’). The emotional connections can be either joyful or sad. Whenever I hear The Carnival is Over it takes me back to the year my Mum died. Dad had locked on to that song as a grand statement about their devotion to each other.
Likewise I get goose bumps every time I hear Toast and Marmalade for Tea, Fool on the Hill or Friends (an obscure Beach Boys tune), or Fontella Bass’s original hit song, Rescue Me, later re-spun by Aretha Franklin. Do not make me explain.

She Who Hangs out Washing on Makeshift Line Strung Between Trees was incurably sad (as were tens of millions around the world) when John Lennon was murdered in New York. We were both sad when the Big O prematurely shuffled off. Roy Orbison was coming into a new phase of creativity at the time, with a famous super group, The Travelling Wilburys, and duets with k.d. Lang.
It sounds a bit bent, but our song is probably one by Warren Zevon, he who wrote of werewolves, excitable boys, accidental martyrs and things to do in Denver when you’re dead. Warren died in 2003 of mesothelioma. Unlike Bowie, who kept his illness to himself, Wazza went out in style with a series of tell-all songs, the most forgettable being his diagnosis song, My Sh**’s F**d Up.
He followed this with the near-death album, “My Ride’s Here” and closed with a collaboration album, “The Wind”, including a version of Knocking on Heaven’s Door and the unspeakably beautiful, Keep me in your Heart for a While.
Ah Wazza, gone but certainly not forgotten.

Some will grieve, others are just sad

If you find yourself truly grief stricken by Bowie’s passing, you will probably trace it to a romance that blossomed in tango with his career trajectory. Or you may have recognised the man for the genius he was, a musical iconoclast who rarely fished in the same pond twice.
To some extent, the star dust and glitter of Bowie passed me by because the music of my teenage years (1960s) was the richest phase in contemporary pop music – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel…
As I edge closer to the age Bowie was when he died, it is becoming transparently obvious that my teenage idols are ageing with me and some are not doing so well. Others, as I said earlier, are still touring in their 70s and 80s, entertaining decades’ worth of fans.

Kamahl, Petula, Rod and Tom

Last year Kamahl did a ‘this is my life’ show at leagues clubs and entertainment venues throughout Queensland. I went to a show in Caloundra, primarily because my musician friend Silas Palmer picked up the gig playing piano. Kamahl, OBE (over bloody eighty), can still hold a tune and is the consummate raconteur. Around that time, the Caloundra Events Centre put on a show with Petula Clark, she of “Don’t Sleep in the Subway Darling” fame. She’s still singing Downtown at 80-something. Petula outlasted many of her contemporaries, including Dusty Springfield and, more recently, Cilla Black. There, you see, I’ve probably struck a chord with someone out there who was falling in love at the same time Cilla was singing her breakthrough hit, Anyone Who Had a Heart (even though producer George Martin wanted it sung by Shirley Bassey).

Blessed are the list-makers

We lost some good ones in 2015, with Bowie just managing to see in the New Year. In no particular order, they included B.B. King, Natalie Cole. Stevie Wright, Percy Sledge, Theodore Bikel, Ronnie Gilbert, Ornette Coleman, Allen Toussaint, Lesley Gore, Rod McKuen, Demis Roussos, Val Doonican and A.J Pero, the drummer from Twisted Sister.

Forgive me if I missed the dead musicians who meant more to you than any of those so named. It will come to us all, heading for the Pearly Gates (perhaps). Much has been written about David Bowie this week – some might say too much. But in case you have not read the best of them – here’s a link to Noel Mengel’s first free-lance piece for The Courier-Mail.

Idea for a fireworks display

Darling Harbour low res — Darling Harbour fireworks April 2014 by Derek Keats https://flic.kr/p/s3oVfj

Not everyone oohs and aahs about firework displays. Some go into curmudgeon mode, grumbling about the expense, the air and noise pollution, the way it upsets dogs and budgies. Some even suggest the money could be given to the needy.
The eclectically musical among you may have noticed the Tom Waits reference in the heading. I’m not even sure we’re allowed to do that, which of itself would be a travesty since Tom has not much to do with this essay at all. Apart from a song of his forever lodged in my lizard brain that tells of a man who “came home from the war with a party in his head”.

For years I thought the first line in Swordfish Trombones was “He came home from the war with a parting in his hair.”
I was technically wrong too with a Twitter/Facebook post on January 1 which suggested the $7.2 million which ‘went up in smoke’ for Sydney’s New Year celebrations could have been better spent. I did the sums and suggested the money spent on celebrating New Year in Sydney could have bought 35,000, $200 food vouchers.
This spontaneous aside sparked enough commentary to suggest the topic was worth further exploration. If you want to be pedantic, only $905,000 went up in smoke (the actual cost of the fireworks contract with pyro-technicians Fodi Fireworks).

So where did it all go?

I asked Sydney City where the other $6.3m went – (a lot of it went in wages and the 15-months of planning that goes into an event of this size).
A spokeswoman told FOMM that as well as designing and producing two major fireworks displays, the City produced entertainment on the harbour and managed seven vantage points around the foreshore, which included implementing road closures, installing fencing and hundreds of toilets, and organising security.
The City is also responsible for cleaning up after the event, which by some reports generated 60 tonnes of garbage.
Ian Kiernan of Clean Up Australia thinks the annual fireworks display is old-fashioned and bad for the environment. He told Radio National it was time for a greener approach – bigger, better and brighter light shows and such. RN rightly pointed out that record crowds were voting with their feet (1.6m this year) adding that the New Year event generates economic benefits for New South Wales.
Kiernan called this “selling the environment for commercial benefit” and he has a point, as our Sydney waterfront jogger reckons people were still cleaning up the New Year detritus days later.

But…

Research by Destination NSW found New Year’s Eve has a direct economic impact of more than $133 million, so the City thinks it is money well spent.
“Sydney New Year’s Eve is Australia’s largest public event and one of the biggest and most technologically advanced fireworks displays in the world. It showcases our great city on a global stage,” a spokeswoman said.
“The event attracts more than a million people to Sydney Harbour and is watched by millions across Australia and more than a billion worldwide.”
The major issue with fireworks is that they are not so far removed from the military world of missiles, RPGs, artillery shells and various explosive devices. One of the reasons firework displays are expensive is that there is much red tape and expense involved in acquiring a pyrotechnics license and permission to use said skills in specific locations. Not to mention public liability insurance.

Upstaging

There’s a fair bit of upcityship where New Year celebrations are concerned. Sydney is pushing the boundaries of its annual budget, this year edging close to burning up $1 million worth of fireworks in two co-ordinated displays lasting a total of 20 minutes. The Australian Financial Review said this boils down to $45,000 a minute. Last year, the fireworks budget was just $650,000, but the City is happy to keep upping the ante because of the international focus on Sydney, the first city in the world to celebrate New Year. Nevertheless, Sydney’s bunger spend was almost three times that of Melbourne ($340,000), with the Sunshine State a distant third.
Conversely, London spent 1.8 million pounds ($A3.68 million) on its 11-minute display, which, if you don’t mind, gave ratepayers relatively better value.
Kuwait and Dubai have been jousting with each other over the coveted entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Kuwait took the gong in 2012, reportedly spending $15 million, only to be upcityshipped by Dubai in 2014. If watching lavish videos of fireworks displays is on your to-do list, check out YouTube.

Tourism schmoorism

One of the reasons cities vote to burn up money in short-burst fireworks displays is the opportunity to attract the ever-fickle tourist dollar.
“So tell me, Irina from Iceland, what prompted you to visit Sydney and are you sorry you brought your fur coat?”
“Ha?!” (Icelandic interjection loosely translated as WTF).
“On TV last year we see the firework and the Opera House all lit up like Christmas, also people surfing on beach, playing batball, drink beer in the sunshine. Maybe we will see koala too, no?”
The multiplier effect ensures that billions of dollars, pounds, euros, króna, roubles or shekels get burned up every New Year’s Eve, every 4th of July, every November 5th, every whatever your national day is and, though on a smaller scale, every agricultural show held anywhere in the world. Even in tiny Allora on the southern Darling Downs, the local show society welcomed in the New Year with a modest fireworks display. In Warwick, where we spent NY 2016, the far away pop-pop noise of fireworks in the showground started a ‘trigger dog’ effect.
It does not take too much thinking about this subject, tens of thousands of cities and towns around the world burning money for a few minutes of oohs and aahs, to turn a man into a socialist. And I’m not the only one.

Sign here

An online petition started by Lisa Nicholls under the change.org banner urged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to spend the equivalent amount of money helping struggling farmers. Last we heard she’d attracted 33,784 signatures. Go on, you know you should.

Something for nothing

While we might grumble about ratepayers’ levies being spent on such frivolities, the hard economic fact is that private enterprise is loath to invest in fireworks displays. How do you get people to pay for the entertainment, which is outdoors and visible from vantage points up to 10 kms away? I guess you could hire an army of people to wander around among revellers shaking donation tins. Human nature being what it is, people are unlikely to start paying for something they have been enjoying for nothing, year after year.
The New Year fireworks upship of state will be hard to turn around. As the City of Sydney implies, planning for 2017 started in October 2015.

Ah well, only 19 more sleeps until Australia Day. Now, if only I can get the dog out from under the couch.

Review FOMM 2015

My friends at Jetpack (a clever plugin attached to my WordPress website), sent me a performance review yesterday. Here’s a few excerpts and links to the best-read FOMMs in 2015 (one of which was written by She Who Sometimes Also Writes).

These are the posts that got the most views in 2015: (right click on link)

Jetpack offered this advice: “Some of your most popular posts were written before 2015. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.”

The best-read of 2014 was Crossing the Nullarbor

Website viewers from 75 countries enjoyed FOMM, most from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Brazil and the UK, although we seem to be building a following in Mainland China and France.

I find it illuminating that this website version of FOMM attracts relatively few comments, probably because I also email FOMM to a rather large list. Some of you regularly send emails of praise and encouragement (and occasional dissent), and some only write when the spirit moves them. Thanks to those who commented online. I’ll be in touch!

Crunchy Numbers about Friday on My Mind!

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. The blog on the website was viewed about 3,300 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 55 trips to carry that many people. (This is a very odd analogy – ed.)

Some of you may not even have been aware that FOMM exists on a website. Bobwords (the website) wholly owned my me and She.

My main plan for this column in 2016 is to find wider distribution; you can help by sending friends the link to the latest post. You can sign up as a subscriber by going to the website and entering your email address where it says ‘subscribe to blog via email’. You will be sent an email to verify and thereafter will receive an email each Friday with a link to the website). We promise not to share your email with anyone.

Meanwhile, feel free to read the ones you missed or, if you were impressed the first time, reward yourself with an encore!

The website has a new feature – further reading (a list of 10 blogs you may find interesting -but please come back to mine).

FOMM resumes on January 8. Happy New Year!

Bob & Laurel Wilson

(Photo: Bob working at the Daily Sun, 1980s. Photographer unknown).

A white Christmas for some

Eyeore Eukey July 2015 — Eeyore takes shelter, Stanthorpe, Qld, July 2015. Photo by Penny Davies)

Composer Irving Berlin had a habit of staying up all night, writing songs. According to Mark Steyn’s A Song for the Season, Berlin summonsed his secretary one morning in 1940 saying: ‘Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody’s ever written!^’

That tune was White Christmas, which if you think about it, must have been a challenging assignment for the Jewish-born composer. The song first surfaced in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It was not an immediate success, but became a major hit by the end of 1942 as its wistful melancholia and homely images resonated with US forces caught up in WWII.

White Christmas is officially the best-selling song of all time (although there was a debate about that when Elton John recorded Candle in the Wind as a tribute to Lady Di). Fifty million copies of Bing’s version – which features a quaint second verse in which Bing does solo whistling – were sold. There have been 100 million copies sold, once the 632 cover versions are taken into account (Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, P.J. Proby, Perry Como, Darlene Love, The Drifters, Karen Carpenter, Lady Gaga, the Crash Test Dummies and the Chicago Gay Men’s Choir, to name but a few). Full list at

According to songfacts, though most songwriters would have done hand-stands if Elvis Presley recorded anything they wrote, Berlin called the King’s 1957 cover a “profane parody”. His staffers were told to call radio stations and ask them not to play it.

Darlene Love was one of the few to sing Berlin’s original first verse (with its images of Los Angeles in summertime), on Phil Spector’s 1963 album A Christmas Gift for You. The first verse is missing from most popular versions including Crosby’s hit, which was initially released on a 78 record with its endearing opening line, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”

For the benefit of people under 60, a 78 was a heavy record made of shellac with one song on each side. It was played at 78 revolutions per minute, which accounted for the ‘scrtch scrtch’ sound, which 50 years later was adopted by DJs like a new idea.

My pop music history contact, Franky’s Dad, takes eclecticism to high art by playing two records on Christmas Day, the aforementioned Spector album and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. If you’re not familiar with Spector’s album, it is a collection of well-known Christmas songs sung by groups like the Ronettes and The Crystals, orchestrated with Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’. It is said that a then unknown Cher features on backing vocals. The album has lasted and you can even find a downloadable version on Amazon.

As we are now straying into Bah Humbug territory, here’s the tip: if you are faithful to the Christian traditions of Christmas or are just sentimental about it, do not click on the links marked BH as they may offend.

There are myriad examples of musicians taking the piss and lapsing into bad taste and obscenity at Christmas-time. Among them are songs by Kevin Bloody Wilson, Tenacious D, Eric Idle, Weird Al Jankovic, Spinal Tap and Ren and Stimpy. Look them up if you must.

The thing about writing a Christmas song, be it melodic schmaltz like White Christmas or nuanced satire like the 2015 offering by Kate Miller Heidke and The Beards, there’s the potential there for a recurring earner.

In the movie About a Boy, Hugh Grant plays dissolute playboy Will Freeman, who gets by on the royalties from his late father’s one-off Christmas song, Santa’s Super Sleigh. The film was based on a book by Nick Hornby and subsequently spawned a TV series which only vaguely follows the plot line.

The real life royalty winner, White Christmas ($A50 million), is topped in earnings status only by Happy Birthday, written in 1893 by the Hill Sisters and said to have earned $A62 million in royalties, according to a BBC4 documentary. Even if those figures look impressive, that’s not what you’d call huge earnings for the songwriter. The earnings for Irving Berlin and his heirs from that one song amount to $480,000 a year since 1940.

Kate Miller-Heidke’s I’m Growing a Beard…, recorded with Melbourne band The Beards, despite its bouncy insouciance, can be interpreted as a feminist rant against the waxing fad (which is hopefully waning), but also has a go at blokes who wax (so they can wear spandex and go bike riding). Fear not, it’s for a good cause. If you pay for a download of the song (BH), the money goes to Bowel Cancer Australia.

If you were wondering why Christmas songs are cluttering my mind this particular Friday, our acapella choir, Tapestry, has a concert scheduled for this Sunday. We had a warm-up on Wednesday at the local nursing home.

Our repertoire is sufficiently high-brow to please the discerning music lover (Veni Veni Emmanuel, How Shall I Fitly Meet Thee from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a beautiful Australian carol The Silver Stars, but with some old chestnuts tossed in – Rudolph and We Wish You A Merry Christmas).

Our version of Rudolph is, dare I say it, somewhat more melodic than this one by rapper DMX (Earl Simmons), inspired by Huffington Post’s 17 Best Worst Christmas Songs (2014).

If you dig around, you’ll find secular songs which have become popular for their own unique spin on Christmas. Franky’s Dad, who maintains a pop trivia website nominated Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy. You know the one: Joe’s in prison and he’s written to his brother Dan to make sure the gravy gets made right, although lots of other family emotions are stirred in with the flour, salt, red wine and tomato sauce. Likewise, Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacCall’s Fairytale of New York takes emotions on a sleigh ride. If it’s a message of peace you’re after, John and Yoko’s So This is Christmas is just about right, even if it sounds a lot like Stewball.

Twisted Sister’s Heavy Metal Christmas is, dare I suggest, more entertaining than any of the excruciating versions of TTDOC inflicted upon us by well-meaning carollers who persist with all 12 verses (and the five golden rings). BH

And for the pianists among the FOMM readership (there’s at least 40 exponents of the piano forte), here’s a Boxing Day challenge – an arrangement of Sleigh Ride in 7/8 time by John Eidsvoog.

Ah yes, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a cat song, so we offer this one, also curated by Huffington Post. Just to prove that all the best ideas originated in New Zealand (Neil Finn, whitebait, pavlova, Buzz Bars, jet boats, me (actually, he’s originally a Scot – Ed) , the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band), editing animal noises into something approaching a melody was done to good effect in the 1960s by the Ashley Clinton Sheep’s Choir. The latter’s classic version of Po Kare Kare Ana is still floating around on a 2012 Kiwiana compilation.

This is attributed to the Jingle Cats – of necessity an instrumental.

Wishing you all the best for Christmas and 2016. Friday on My Mind returns on January 8.

Goodwill housing

While we’re all getting in the goodwill mood, Australians need to think seriously about this country’s housing problem. There isn’t enough of it to go around and what property is available is often out of the reach of low income households.

(Percentage of age groups with mortgages: ABS Surveys of Income and Housing)

This is no overnight thing. Tax concessions which favour property investors have led to a big swelling of their ranks – some 1.18 million. First there was negative gearing, re-introduced in 1985, which allows investors to claim rental expenses and interest on housing loans against their income. Second, the 50% capital gains tax exemption which property investors have enjoyed since 1999. Most invest on the expectation of future capital gain, rather than negative gearing benefits.

A 2014 article in The Conversation by Kate Shaw revealed that Australia’s GDP contribution of real estate transactions is the highest in the world – three times higher than in the US. Around one in seven Australian taxpayers owns one or more investment properties. Australia also has one of the highest levels of household debt in the OECD, due to mortgage borrowings.

As recent research on Australia’s rental market has found, those in the lowest 40% of gross income group struggle to meet rental costs and in capital city markets like Sydney or Melbourne pay up to 65% of their income for rental accommodation.

As a rule of thumb, low income earners paying 30% or more of their gross income in rent or mortgage payments are suffering housing stress.

Gavin Wood and Rachel Ong writing for The Conversation earlier this year underlined the growing problem of housing affordability. In 1982, the ABS survey of income and housing stated that 168,000 (or 10%) of home buyers spent more than 30% of their gross household income on housing costs. By 2011, those numbers had soared to 640,000, or 21% of all home buyers.

Wood and Ong also found that young first time buyers are finding it increasingly difficult to buy a home. As the chart above shows, the rate of home ownership in the 25–34 year age group slumped from 56% in 1982 to only 34% in 2011.

Wood and Ong say one in six Australians own two or more houses and 30% are holiday houses (2010 figures).

The Australian Housing Urban Research Institute (AHURI) says that while private rental is an important and growing part of our housing system, it has failed to serve the housing needs of low-income people. The 2006 ABS Census showed that 22% of households rent privately. In 2006, private renter dwellings numbered 1.47 million Australia-wide, an increase of 11 per cent since 2001.

But new research by A.C Nielsen for domain.com.au estimates that up to a third of Australians over 18 are renting, with higher proportions in the Northern Territory (43%) and Queensland (36%).

The stumbling block for people looking to rent a house or unit in a capital city is the up-front cost (usually a month’s rent and a bond (assuming $1000), not to mention storage and moving costs. FOMM figures the average establishment costs of a lease in one of five capital cities to be $2,828).

And domain’s rental market research shows it can be a short-lived reprieve, with 47% of Australians living in their current rental property for less than two years, and only 27% in the same property for more than five years.

Housing policy NGO National Shelter instigated the Rental Affordability Index as a response to media and political obsession with house purchase markets. The Index highlights the severe housing stress experienced by renting Australians. The report was produced by National Shelter, Community Sector Banking (CSB) and SGS Economics and Planning.

National Shelter executive officer Adrian Pisarski says the index fills major gaps in housing data, as it tracks household rents against household incomes in capital cities and regions across Australia.

“It reveals deterioration in our rental affordability, a result of 25 years of policy inadequacy and market failure. It shows why our low income households live in poverty and why life is a struggle, often a desperate one for moderate income working families.”

The RAI gives households who are paying 30% of income on rent a score of 100, a critical threshold for housing stress. A score below 100 indicates severe housing stress.

The report’s key finding is that while average rental affordability remained below 30% across all states, households in the lowest 40% of income consistently face severely and extremely unaffordable rents. This is the case in all regions of Australia. In the worst cases, non-family households are spending more than 60% of their income on housing (Sydney and Melbourne). Causes of homelessness, then, are shifting from traditional factors (escaping abuse, substance misuse, mental health issues), to being pushed out of the housing market by those with higher incomes.

People who are struggling to live on a government payment are the worst-affected by the crisis in affordable housing, according to the 2015 Anglicare Australia Rental Affordability Snapshot. The snapshot across all cities and regions shows that of the 65,500+ properties assessed for suitability, less than 1% were available for single people living on government allowances. Single people on the minimum wage would find 3.3% of these properties to be affordable. A working couple would fare better, with 23.8% of these properties suitable for their level of income. An age pensioner couple would find only 3.4% or 2,239 properties affordable.

Pisarski says the basic problem remains the lack of affordable rental properties and the lack of housing supply in general. He says one of the results is an emerging trends towards inter-generational living, with two and sometimes three generations under the one roof.

Australians are afforded little in the way of tenant protection, compared with cities in the US and Europe where rent controls and security of tenure are considered to be an important adjunct to social security.

Shaw makes a few broad comparisons between tenant legislation in Victoria and Germany. Rents can be increased in Victoria every six months with no limit on the amount (though the tenant may have grounds for appeal). In Germany, rent increases are capped at 20% every three years. In Victoria, 60 days is the standard amount of notice to vacate. In Germany notice varies according to how long the tenant has lived there: three months is the minimum for someone who has lived in the property for less than five years. Six months’ notice is required for a tenancy between five and eight years; nine months for longer than eight years.

In a perfect world, the Australian government would be looking to offer tax incentives to investors to rent to eligible (low-income) families at well below market rent. There was such a scheme, called the ‘National Rental Affordability Scheme’, but this only applied to investors building new dwellings, and as of September 2015, at least in Queensland, even this limited scheme was shut down:

To end this penultimate FOMM for 2015 on a cheery note, I read recently of one landlord who gave his tenants a one month ‘rent holiday’ as a Christmas present and thanks for being good tenants.

Travel without regrets

la traffic — LA freeway photo by Jeff Turner flickr

Dedicated readers will know by now my penchant for tinkering with numbers, so you won’t be surprised that I have done an inflation-adjusted calculation on my/our travel adventures over 45 years. O.M.G. We could have bought a second home, or a third; a luxury yacht, a Maserati or achieved the mythical $1 million retirement target.

New Zealand is Australia’s most popular outbound travel destination – 1.06 million went there in the year to March 2015; 483,000 for a holiday, another 603,000 on business or visiting family and friends. The next most popular outbound destination, according to Austrade’s Tourism Research Australia, was the USA (590,000 holiday makers and 286,000 people doing business or visiting family and friends). In third place was Indonesia (830,000), then Thailand (596,000). The UK is up there, with 510,000 Australian visitors. In all, 8.81 million Australians travelled overseas, for holidays, for business or to visit family and friends.
The other 15 million or so stayed home.

Ignoring travel alerts

Surprisingly (well, I was surprised) 77,000 Australians went on holiday in the Middle East and North Africa in the year to March 2015. There’s a risk/reward equation that probably adds a frisson of excitement to travel in unstable regions.
Egypt (population 91 million) attracts tourists who have the Pyramids on their bucket lists. Wikipedia says Egypt attracted a record 14.7 million visitors in 2010, but numbers have dropped significantly since 2013, due to civil unrest and travel warnings.
Reader M took her teenage sons to Egypt in 2008, “for an education”. It was also a rite of passage, as she had travelled there in 1985. She has no plans to return to Egypt, however, disillusioned by the lack of progress in that country since visiting 23 years earlier.
“Back then Egypt was pretty much culturally secular and was atmospherically a wonderful cross of east meets west. Many women wore the head scarf but an equal number did not. Cairo was cosmopolitan, with French, English and Italian influences. People were open, educated and friendly and the country looked affluent.

“Fast forward 23 years and nothing had been progressed in the country. In fact, a real sense of stagnation was evident. Not a road mended or a building finished….. Every woman was covered and there was pollution and filth everywhere.
“Where previously we were invited to people’s homes and the conversation was about global issues, politics, religion and family, this time the conversation was one-way rhetoric-driven, narrow, politically driven. The difference was staggering.”

Renovate or travel?

So far, we have not been that adventurous. In 1990, we’d been doing the sums on a major renovation of our 1930s colonial in Annerley. We planned to claw the $20k back from mortgage payments as we’d been keeping ahead of the game. Suddenly, in 1991, I found myself between jobs, with two months’ leave before I started the new one. We took our son (aged 9) out of school and spent the $20k on a tour of the US, Canada and New Zealand. We parlayed with the boy’s teacher – he had to keep a journal and make notes of all the amazing things he saw (Niagara Falls, the bilingual McDonald’s in Montreal, the Grand Canyon, Universal Studios, Disneyland, Giant Redwoods, Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump (more on that another day), and Fort McLeod, birthplace of Joni Mitchell (and She Who Planned the Itinerary). We hired a 20-foot recreational ‘ve-hicle’ (RV) from a depot at Anaheim and set off on the LA Freeway at 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon. What were we thinking? I later counselled son that “Mum and Dad were screaming in the car” was not the sort of diary entry his teacher would appreciate.

No regrets at all

Looking back, you never regret the money spent on travel, even when it was shitty; when the digs were below standard, when you all had head colds and the exchange rate was unfavourable. I remember nosing the RV into a parking spot at the Grand Canyon lookout. Our son got out, ran over to the rim of the canyon (it was almost sunset) and went “Wow”. We all went “wow”. He took an amazing photo with a cheap Kodak camera. We drove right around the canyon in the next week, shopping at Native American roadside stalls, talking Aussie to people, feeling light-headed from the rarefied air. A lasting family dinner-time catch phrase stems from overhearing this at an Arizona RV park all you can eat buffet:
“Hey Hank, you wants any more?
“Nope, if I eats any more I’ll be sick.”

US road trip

We rattled across four states in that big RV. The odd highlight (for me) was parking it in a 500-lot RV park in Las Vegas, getting a complimentary shuttle bus to the casino, winning $17 on the slots and queuing up for the $3.99 all you can eat buffet at Circus Circus. I tried to persuade SWPTI to get (re) married in an Elvis chapel (you can do that in Nevada), but she couldn’t get out of Vegas quick enough.
Every time we stopped for a meal at a roadhouse or diner, the wait staff would fuss over our boy and say “make him tark”. We did three days at Disneyland, drove up the coast to San Francisco, took a tour to Alcatraz, went camping in national parks, hugged a redwood, made sure we stored our food in bear-proof lockers. We drove across the desert in the RV we dubbed “Horse with No Name” and nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning because someone left the rear window open.
We ended the adventure the way it began, stuck in a 90-mile traffic jam (between Vegas and Anaheim).

Those inspired to travel reading books by Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Bruce Chatwin and such probably see travel as M does − as a pilgrimage (religious or not), to experience the journey for itself and to walk in other people’s shoes.
Others have a list of famous places, or a list of risky things to do in said places (e.g. running with the bulls at Pamplona, climbing Uluru or bungy-jumping off the Kawarau bridge at Queenstown).

On our first visit to the Red Centre, we arrived at one of the elevated spots where one can watch the sun set over Uluru. There were a lot of people there, complete with picnic hampers, bubbles, wine glasses, cameras and mobile phones.
Anyway, the sun began to sink and the rock started changing colour; it should have been time for a bit of hush, right? Not for two old blokes from Queensland who spent the entire time talking about how the Broncos were going and who’d win the State of Origin. They’ve come to this ancient, spooky place and can’t handle the feeling they aren’t really supposed to be there. So they drown the feelings out with white fella tribal talk and a few tinnies.

Next day we walked past 30 people waiting to climb the Rock (the climb was later closed because of high winds), which doesn’t excuse the wannabe climbers from ignoring the wishes of local Aborigines.
We took the Mala Walk around Uluru and I wished I’d gone before I left because (hint for others), there are no public toilets on this 11km walk. Apart from that, it was stunningly beautiful; a bit overwhelming, really.
As travel probably should be.

Coffee anyone?

Coffee farm at Koonorigan (NSW). Photo provided by ASTCA

I’d had a coffee brewing machine at home for about a year before realising the increasingly brackish taste was due to a long overdue need to purge the machine of accumulated mineral deposits. Along the way I also learned that it is a good idea to clean the milk frothing wand after every cappuccino.
A barista at our local café looked over her spectacles when I told her I’d just de-scaled our machine for the first time.
“We do that every day!” she said… “Long black, is it?”

Long black’s my choice and I’ve got the home blend down to a fine art. Most days I have two cups in the morning, but rarely more and it is a hard-learned lesson not to consume coffee after 2pm. Despite the science that tells you that the caffeine in coffee departs the system within four to six hours, coffee at 4pm or later will keep me wide-eyed and twitching until 2am.
Now I don’t know about you, but in my experience not every coffee shop has the right idea about how to make a good long black. It can’t be tepid, it can’t be thin and watery, and it must not have that acrid burnt-bean taste. Not at $4+ a cup.

They’re everywhere

Our little village has 13 places in the main street alone where you can sit and sip your coffee and watch the passing parade, or read their newspapers. Names and faces change all the time. One door closes and another opens. Over the years I’ve probably tried them all but come back to the same one or two.
Australians consumed 16.3 million coffees every day, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) study in 2011-2012, but about two thirds were made with (shudder) instant powdered coffee.
The ABS says coffee (including coffee substitutes), was consumed by nearly half the population (46%). Consumption was closely associated with age, with one in three (34%) people aged 19-30 years and two in three (66%) aged 51-70 years partaking of coffee. Only 4.5% of people aged 2-18 were labelled coffee drinkers.

Aussies spend $16 a week on their brew

A survey by Canstar Blue reveals that more than half of Aussies drink more than two cups of coffee each day. One in three claims they are unable to function properly without their cuppa. The average Australian will spend $16 per week on coffee – $832 per year.
For that for that kind of money you could buy yourself an old Corolla that smells of wet dog and has 300k on the clock. Or you could buy a deadly new coffee brewing machine along with the finest set of Italian cups, a grinder and a month’s worth of beans. After that, your only expense would be electricity, milk and sugar.

Coffee is big business in Australia. Ibisworld’s latest survey estimates revenue at $5.4 billion and profits at $208 million, with a five-year annual growth rate of 7.4%. Ibisworld says there are 7,623 businesses involved in the coffee trade, employing 70,694 people. The industry’s collective wages bill is $1.3 billion.
The key reasons people get involved in this business is that they believe the profit margins are lucrative – (yeah, provided you can snare the right staff and train them to put a perfect latte in front of someone, complete with art, just as they are sitting down). Cafes that get a reputation for slow service and mixing up orders just don’t last.

Small trader says coffee is ‘hard, hot work’

Although the big franchise chains are increasing their market share, the heart of the trade in Australia is independent traders like my Brisbane coffee consultant, Mr Talkfast (TF). He says the average place selling coffee makes 100 cups a day. But with inner city cafes making many hundreds, and his suburban shop making 300 a day, it seems a lot of places make significantly less. TF says the high profit margin is a myth, unless you are roasting your own beans, but even then you need the volume.

“The average margin is about 10% once you take wages into account. New café operators spend too much on fit-outs and things like top-line commercial fridges and brand-new, expensive coffee machines.
“They often don’t have a realistic view of the business and don’t realise that it is hard, hot work.”

Meanwhile the big chains keep expanding

The key to growth is to control the coffee bean roasting businesses that supply cafes. While the majority of Australia’s 120,000 coffee destinations are owned and operated by sole traders, the big chains are getting bigger, with more than 200 coffee franchise and café chain brands, according to listed company Retail Food Group (RFG).
In Australia RFG owns the Gloria Jeans franchise and other outlets. RFG signalled a growth strategy in late 2014 when buying the national roasting and distribution company Di Bella Coffee, founded in 2002 by Phillip Di Bella.
The big chains dominate in the US and Canada, where coffee-to-go is the preference. Last year US-based Burger King fast food giant bought out the Canadian chain founded by ice hockey star Tim Horton in 1964. Tim Hortons is ubiquitous in Canada, with 3,665 outlets selling coffee and donuts, outranking McDonald’s in that country for fast food service outlets.
US coffee giant Starbucks expanded into the Australian market in 2000, but probably left its run too late, as Australian coffee drinkers were already habituated to their local, boutique cafés. Starbucks closed most of its 85 stores in 2008, with the remaining 24 stores since taken over by the 7-Eleven franchise.

Locally grown coffee a small part of the market

In case you’ve never been to Mareeba on the Atherton Tablelands or visited a coffee farm around the northern rivers of NSW, Australians do grow coffee. President of the Australian Sub Tropical Coffee Association, Jan Fadeli, says the total amount of coffee grown in Australia is 600 tonnes per year.
“In 2014 Australia imported 72,000 tonnes. Roughly, Australia produces less than 1% of what is consumed.” ASTCA’s members promote their product as “clean and green”, that is, free of pesticides and processed free of chemicals.
Australia imports beans from countries including Brazil, Columbia, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

One thing is clear: bad coffee should not be tolerated, at home or away. If you complain to a café that your coffee isn’t hot and they put it in the microwave, it’s time to leave.
Coffee industry lore is that new entrants typically last six months before closing their doors. Risings labour costs and rents are the major impediments.
TF, who also has a day job, has been in the coffee business with his partner for eight years and says the key to the business is quality, consistency and customer service.

“It (the shop) won’t be there forever, but we actually find it quite rewarding in terms of customer feedback.”
He has this advice for anyone thinking they can make a fortune from coffee.

“I would tell them to work out exactly what they’re prepared to lose before going into business. They should work out the maximum they are prepared to lose and make that their budget for the first year. And be prepared for hard work.”

Meanwhile She Who Makes Shopping Lists (While Hubby Swans About Writing Columns) wants to know what we need.
“Coffee, sugar, milk and vinegar.”
“Vinegar?”
“It’s time to de-scale the coffee machine.”

Terrorism and the media

sunset Hydra — The author seeks inspiration on a Greek Island

Deck the halls and all that, it’s the lead-up to the silly season, tainted as it is by relentless media reports about bombings, terrorist attacks and can-it-happen-here scenarios.
Despite the disproportionate Australian media coverage of the Paris attacks that left at least 129 dead, pretty soon it will dawn on Australians that there are just 33 shopping days to Christmas. You already missed surface mail by two months. Cards need to be sent soon, especially if you’re catching overseas airmail (allow three weeks).
Hams and turkeys need to be ordered, family members need to be summonsed (or not). You may care instead to send a Christmas-spend sized donation to the charity of your choice. Or not.

Soon we’ll be swept up in the coming storm and cyclone season and the inevitable bush fires (which appear to have started already). Our parochial media will settle down and report on domestic issues. Between Christmas and New Year, news reports will focus on the Christmas road toll, epic drunkenness outside nightclubs, drug busts, misadventures at the beach, the inevitable ‘year-enders’ (summaries of the year that was) and in desperate times, cat up a tree stories.

But interpretations of reality intrude

Meanwhile, we can all empathise with the French people; after all, about 110,000 people of French descent live in this country. Many people started using a Facebook app, adding the Tricolours to their profiles, as a sign of solidarity, perhaps.
There was also a bombing in Beirut the day before, which killed 46 people and injured at least 249, which was comparatively ignored amid the hysteria about France. Facebook initially copped a bit of flak about not providing a Lebanese flag app.
As many commentators are saying, the hysterical media coverage that followed the Paris attacks is completely disproportionate to the statistical likelihood of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack. Terrorist groups thrive on publicity; it feeds their evil appetites and attracts new acolytes. The more the mass media plays it up, the more it justifies the logic of it to the new recruits.

Alert but not really alarmed

Somewhere caught in the cobwebs of my younger memory, there we are getting on a London underground train and then being told to immediately leave the train and exit to (Oxford Street?) as quickly as possible.
British people take this kind of thing in their stride, calmly riding the endless escalators to the daylight as if they were going to meet a friend for tea and cake.
We were not overly perturbed, although it brought back those conversations with parents when we told them we were going back-packing in Europe, circa 1973. They were panicking, as parents tend to do, about the then current Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) habit of carrying out random bombing attacks on targets in London as a response to British troops interfering in Irish business.
Compared with more recent terrorist attacks, the casualties were small, but the attacks frequent and brutal enough to instil fear and anxiety among London’s populace. The IRA had a habit of making telephone calls to police or newspapers shortly before the bombs were detonated, which may have explained the half-remembered tube evacuation.

And still the west interferes

That’s yet another example, albeit 40-plus years ago, of what happens when supposedly superior western powers stick their noses into the religious and political dynamics of other countries. Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s approach to The Troubles did not work, George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq clearly stirred up the Middle East, ditto Afghanistan, while the US-led tactic of bombing raids on ISIS targets in Syria is arguably fuelling more terrorist activities.

Terrorism is not new. While the use of the term to describe random crimes of violence upon private citizens is in dispute, it is said to date back to the French reign of terror in the 16th century.
In the 21st century, the cowardly practise of achieving some sort of pyrrhic victory through blowing oneself up, thereby killing and injuring random citizens, is universally in the public eye via the 24/7 news cycle and the Internet.
Sure there will be some who opted out of the news cycle and may still be unaware of last Friday’s co-ordinated attacks in Paris. But the Australian authorities are taking no chances. The Australian government website smartraveller.gov.au has set its travel advisory for Paris and the Ile de France area to amber: “Reconsider the need to travel.”

Some avid newspaper readers and commercial television watchers will have called their travel agents already to cancel their romantic Christmas in Paris holidays. Others will go ahead and travel, mindful that the odds of dying in a terrorist attack (one in 20 million) is negligible, compared to the likelihood of dying in a car accident (the lifetime odds being 1 in 100, according to lifeinsurancequotes.org. That’s not to be glib or unsympathetic about what happened in Paris, last week and also in January, but you need to look at these statistics.

Nevertheless, terrorism attacks have been on the rise. Wikipedia.org says there have been 289 attacks in the year to date. A report released this month contains evidence that terrorism deaths have risen fivefold since 2000 and steeply since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011 (see chart below).

global-terrorism-index-data — Global Terrorism Index 2015, the Institute for Economics and Peace

The Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace says 32,865 people died in terrorist attacks in 2014, an 80% increase on 2013. But 82% of attacks occurred in just five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. The report covers the period 2000-2014 with particular emphasis on 2014.
Points worth noting include:
• Homicide claims 40 times as many lives as terrorism;
• 5% of the 107,000 terrorist fatalities since 2000 happened in OECD countries;
• 50% of all terrorist attacks claim no lives;
• Of the 13 countries at risk of increased terrorist activity, six are in Africa, three are in Asia, three in the Middle East and one in the Americas (Mexico);
• Only 4.4% of terrorist attacks averaged over the past 15 years have occurred in western countries, accounting for 2.6% of deaths;

From my pacifist corner, it seems crystal clear the attacks on France are in response to that country’s commitment to supporting US-led air strikes in Syria. Australia is part of this, so we have to assume we are a target.

There are those who avoid reading mainstream newspapers or watching commercial televisions news because of the anxiety prompted by overblown coverage of terrorist attacks.
Queensland’s Courier-Mail allocated 35 tabloid pages in just three days, making the Sunday Mail’s 10-page wraparound look like a muted response.
But if you don’t trust newspapers, you should also be wary of social media. A reader alerted me to www.thatsnonsense.com, a UK website which explores myths, misleading material and plain mischievous posts. There were many examples this week, not the least of which had US Presidential candidate Donald Trump making insensitive remarks in a tweet about Paris, when the original tweet was made in January, about the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

So yes, terrorist attacks are on the rise, but so is the volume of global media coverage and commentary and the hawkish rhetoric from western countries.
Dial it down, people. Take a breath.

Toilet reading for beginners

Some of you might want to wash your hands after reading this.
I do some of my best thinking in the toilet. The lavatory is definitely the smallest room in the house, unless of course you have a wine cellar, and even then, you don’t go to the wine cellar to think, do you? Ensconced in the loo with the door shut, one can sit and contemplate, for as long as one likes, really. Someone might tap on the door with an “are you in there?”, but the query is rarely loaded with requests to “hurry up about it because the guests will be here soon”.

Best of all, you can multi-task in the dunny (Oz). For instance I got the idea for this column while (ahem) doing number twos. You didn’t really need to know that, but nevertheless, you do. Not that it was anything close to an original idea. Various popular magazines, newspapers and blogs have seized upon this as a topic for a slow news day/week to beat up anxiety about constipation and piles.
The best part about the smallest room in the house is the certainty that no-one will disturb you there. There have been times (thinks: is this too much information) when I just put the wooden seat down and sit on the lid, elbow on one knee, head resting on one palm. I know, I know, Rodin did it first – a classic pose of rumination.

You can establish a certain atmosphere in the loo with the things you put on the walls – The Prophet, Buddhist prayer flags, calendars, framed tickets to great rock concerts, selfies of the family with famous people, postcards from places your friends have never been.

TR a ‘harmless pastime’

As mentioned, some articles will tell you that reading in the loo is a bad habit which can lead to constipation/piles and angry red welts on one’s buttocks.
Dr Ron Shaoul, an Israeli paediatric gastroenterologist, published a study in 2008, possibly the most scientific attempt to shine light under the dunny door. Shaoul thought toilet reading (TR) was woefully neglected by scientists, considering the habit dated back to the emergence of printed books.
Shaoul and his colleagues began with a hypothesis that toilet reading (TR) provides a distraction and acts as an unconscious relaxation technique, thus allowing an easier defecation process. The authors also examined the possible connection between TR and constipation and haemorrhoids. The study quoted an International Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) survey that four out of ten people read in the toilet, with men (49%) outnumbering women (26%). Newspapers were the most popular reading option, while one in 10 flicked through a magazine. Eight percent read a book and 4% perused their bills.

Shaoul’s study of 500 adults found that TR is common, involving 52.7% of the population. The TR group were less constipated (8.0%vs 13.7%) but had more haemorrhoids (23.6%vs 18.2%). The differences were classified as ‘not significant’, leading Shaoul to conclude that TR is a common and benign habit.

In 2011, The Guardian’s Ian Simple quoted author Henry Miller as a TR advocate.
“All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet – if one wants to extract the full flavour of their content.”

Comic songwriter Pete Denahy takes a moment in the YouTube version of his song “Lookin’ at my phone” to scroll through texts while sitting on the loo. Denahy has a knack for a catchy song that resonates with ordinary people. He’s the author of Sort of, Dunno, Nuthin’, a father/son non-conversation that went viral. Note how his phone song changes key four times, itself a parody of some country songs.
Surveys in Australia reveal that 75% of mobile phone users browse the web, text or email while in the loo. If you’ve considered buying a second-hand phone, you need to think about this. The New Zealand Herald revealed that more than two-thirds of New Zealanders use their mobile phones while on the toilet. The Colmar Brunton survey found that 23% used their phones on the loo at home, and 19% took their phone to the toilet while at work.

Died on the throne

Speaking of New Zealand, we would often fantasise during that country’s bleak winters about a sheepskin toilet seat cover with a thin element, like an electric blanket. I’d be the first to concede that this is (a) impractical and (b) potentially dangerous (being that water and electricity never mix well).
Speaking of which, some people have died if not on the toilet, then in close proximity. In the latter category the image that first came to mind was the scene in Pulp Fiction when hitman Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta, is caught with his trousers down. For those who like their research buttered on both sides, in the scene where Butch (Bruce Willis) shoots Vega (Travolta), the latter emerges from the toilet, clutching a book (genius.com says it is Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell), whereupon he espies Butch, who is holding the sub machine gun he found lying next to the toaster. The toast pops and a WTF look is soon wiped from Vincent’s face as director Quentin Tarantino adds one more to the body count.
In real life too, people have died on or near the throne. King Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, George II of Great Britain, and more recently, Lenny Bruce are just some of the names on this list. (Elvis omitted out of respect for ‘The King’)
In 1306, King Wenceslaus was murdered with a spear while sitting in the garderobe (a medieval toilet). Another Wikipedia entry tells us that in 1760 George II of Great Britain died on that other throne from some kind of heart event. More recently (1966) comedian Lenny Bruce also died on the dunny (of a heroin overdose).

Exploding toilets and other myths

There are a few urban myths about dunnies. Australia’s notorious redback spider is said to like hanging out in dark, damp places, although this was thought to be more prevalent in the days of outdoor dunnies. The more benign green tree frog also favours the porcelain pool.
Myth-busting website snopes.com consistently debunks the multiple stories about exploding toilets. In the US, ever-exaggerated myths persist about cat-sized water rats, snapping turtles and alligators living in New York sewers. These pervasive tales have made toilet-training difficult for Manhattan mothers.

Redecorate your dunny

I’m proclaiming 2016 The Year of the Dunny, a time when the smallest room in the house can be given a makeover. It should be repainted in soothing colours, have at least some artwork, wind chimes, scented candles, potted plants, a magazine rack and well-located shelves to place your book/mobile phone/IPad/glass of red. Shop around for less prosaic toilet roll covers. Wire a pair of Bose speakers into the ceiling so you can stream dunny music of your choice from paytheartistsapittance.com. May I suggest Randy Newman’s Political Science, Bob Segar’s Night Moves, and (you can never be too careful), instructions for your executor via that Bee Gees song, you know…“In the event of something happening to me…”