Winter Again

I had a Canadian girlfriend who would laugh when I talked of winter in Australia. ‘Winter! You don’t have winter what are you talking about’. Well, Canada certainly has a summer. I remember trying to sleep at Ma and Pa Martins orchid in the Okanogan with temperatures in high thirties thinking this is not the image I had of Canada. So when I stepped out of Sydney airport in August to a warm sunny day I wasn’t too surprised about unseasonal weather. Damn, had I spent all that money to escape winter for nothing? I was reassured quickly that spring had come just this week, ‘like an Indian summer’. Well I was glad to hear it. I know it can get cold here. Living up in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney winter can be a wet , cold and miserable affair with temperatures dropping below zero. Now I know it will never get to minus 30, 40 or 50 here but when water turns to ice I consider that cold. Add a little, or a lot, of drizzle and high altitude wind sheer and winter here is an event I’d rather avoid.

I was soon heading west on the City Rail train to Mt Victoria armed with a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald. Bundled in with all the other quirky snippets in column 8 was the reports of blow fly sightings signalling the beginning of spring. Yes, where else but Australia, the ‘blow fly index’ . It seems the moment the temperature rises a few degrees the blowies get moving off the plains, over the range to annoy you and I. Then there is the cicada index to indicate summer has arrived. You almost forget about the deafening crescendos these little fellows generate until the next summer when you are almost driven crazy by the relentless chorus. Oh, the little things that come back to you quickly when you return home. Similarly, I thought my commentary on toilet practice and costumes would have been left behind on the other side of the globe but I had a chuckle on return. Australians have this strange ritual around washing hands. I remember years ago you would dry your hands on paper towels placed near the hand basin. Some might even remember the endless towel which could be pulled down to supply a new section of dry towel. Either way you would exit the convenience with dry hands. Somewhere back in the 70’s this cultural practice disappeared replaced by the electric blower. I’d like to call it by its common name, electric hand dryer, but unfortunately this is a real misnomer. Has anyone ever stood long enough to actually dry their hands? It is funny to watch people walk up to this machine and wave their hands under it briefly. They know from years of experience that this action will result in absolutely nothing other than slightly warming the hands but feel committed to make some acknowledgement of the machine in the hand cleaning process and then most times wipe their hands on their pants as they walk out the door.

Anyone reading this blog would be aware of my previous discussion on pay for poo. Well thankfully Australia is a free poo nation but there is one practice that I find curious. I am always amused when I see a sign stating something like, ‘this toilet is for costumer use only!’ I have almost been tempted to go into a service station, café or the like and buy whatever, hamburger, chips, drinks or whatever is on sale and then just sitting down and refusing to move at the end of the day. When the perplexed staff tell you they want to close shop and ask you to leave I’d just love to turn and say, ‘sorry but I still have that hamburger and coke inside me and hell I’d hate to offload that is someone else’s toilet now would I, that wouldn’t be fair on them would it, to use their toilet for food bought in your shop?’. I think some people just like to be awkward.

There is a shop near where I lived and the woman who owned the shop had a sign up saying, ‘No change given for phone!’. Occasionally I would buy take away food and would engage in a little small talk while she was flipping patties or whatever and one day the telephone subject came up and she started complaining about people coming in and cleaning her out of change for the phone. I know it is generally better to glaze over the eyes, take your food and leave in these situations but I took the bait and said, ‘Maria how often do you go to the bank?’. ‘Oh, everyday’ she said, ‘I never like to leave money on the premises over night’. ‘Maria’ I replied ‘wouldn’t it make sense to grab a few bags of coins while at the bank, they don’t charge you for change?’. Well, a confounded look came across her face as she considered what I had said. For a moment I thought there was going to be a short circuit or sparks and smoke would emit from the cranial region. It was clear this suggestion ran totally counter to her pet grievance that she had harboured for many years and the thought that she might actually anticipate and accommodate these people who had annoyed her for years was just too much to comprehend. Now, if I was the owner of a corner store I’d be more than happy to have a telephone box right out front of my shop as people use the phone then often walk inside to buy something or would go to your shop over Fred’s shop because they wanted to use the phone while they were there. But then I suppose some people just need something to complain about and Maria in my home town, the service station manager who puts the ugly sign on the toilet door and the bus driver from Riga to Vilnius perplexed about his onboard toilet have an outlook on life that crosses language and cultural barriers. Oh, I am definitely back in Australia now when I start to draw parallels between the corner shop owner and a the bus driver in Latvia.