Me, Fry and cigarettes

We sat in the “Great Court”, surrounded by what we imagined to be sandstone buildings, but in actual fact was merely cladding over ordinary boring standard bricks. There was an element of pride sitting outside the cafe at this great university. Of course we sullied it with our language and our cigarette butts, but that doesn't mean we didn't appreciate how beautiful our surrounds were. 

Looking back, I wonder about my fashion choices. I seemed to be going through my slightly slacker phase, having bought a retro 1970s suede jacket and my skater shoes. The rest of the group in some semblance of that same theme. Sneakers, raver shoes, platforms those were footwear styles that defined the late 90s.

So we’d sit in this here called great court and believe ourselves to be full of promise. My arm would be raised with my elbow rested on the back of the chair and a cigarette extended from my fingers. I would follow the cigarette with my eyes as I brought it to my lips. Inhale and exhale, watch the smoke leave my lungs and my lips. I’d gesticulate wildly with the hand holding the cigarette, watching the great arc of light I’d created from the lit, colloquially known, cancer stick.

It’s because I’ve been reading Stephen Fry’s "Fry Chronicles" that this memory has pushed itself to the forefront of my mind.  I find Fry pee your pant funny as well as being incredibly brilliantly minded. One of my favourite  parts, so far, covers cigarettes and how hard it has been for him to give up the wretched habit.

I can’t really empathise with that bit, as I am not a 100% non-smoker. Well I am as far as any response to a survey would suggest, but I am still a sometimes-when-I’m-drinking smoker. The reason is that I had a love affair with cigarettes, and they were also the essential accessory to my late high school and university years. Smoking now, when I do it, makes me feel young. I forget the wrinkles, the sagging boobs, wide bum and I remember what it was like to be free. It's the next day that I am wracked with guilt and worry about my health.

Cigarettes introduced me to people I would have never met. There’s a smoker’s convenant, and us smokers would huddle in groups outside of buildings making immediate friends with strangers. Cigarettes provide opportunities for people who might be slightly socially awkward. On some level, I probably believed they made me cool. I’m fairly sure that cigarettes helped define me, or my brand, in my own mind.

I was wholly convinced that I smoked to still the dizzying speeds of my mind. Now my brain is so slow that thoughts stumble across my brain like drunken, disoriented old men and they are so rare I am so delighted to see one that I grab onto it with both hands while mentally doing a 'congratulations for still thinking' dance. The little suckers, (ha) were quite powerful in terms of their abilities  to make me believe I couldn’t do anything without having a cigarette first.

But again, thankfully I don't smoke all the time anymore. If I had any self control at all, I probably wouldn't smoke at all. Well I do think I have self control until I have a drink...then things start falling apart. From bad food to cigarettes, after booze I am apparently still a teenager at heart. 

So when Fry tells his story of addiction, I am amazed that someone as supremely intelligent as him can have such issues. I'd have expected him to be more in control than the rest of us mere mortals. So tomorrow, when I catch up with my uni friends, I am will hopefully not feel quite as guilty as I usually would, because even the likes of Stephen Fry finds it hard to give things up. 

Lost in execution

You would have noticed that my last post departed from the usual style and focused on something other than the first person stuff I’ve been banging on with. I’ll probably do that from time to time as I am so frequently outraged by some numpty or other in the news, I may as well share my opinion with you too! However, today we go back to my usual banging on.  

LSH is Canadian. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. But he is. And we forgive him for it. That’s a joke, by the way. I truly love that he’s Canadian and a proud Canadian – at that. I am, mostly, a proud English person. I love the country that I’m from. There’s so much about it I find wonderful. Okay, mainly just the awesome access to music, great variety of fashion, great junk food and the pub culture. But there’s something different about the way LSH truly loves being Canadian. He wears Canadian shirts (apparently something they all do, but I am yet to see for myself) loves his Roots (the brand, you dirty minded people) and he love loves ice hockey.

Roots is a ridiculous name for a brand, I admit that. LSH bought me a Roots jumper a few years ago on one of his trips home and it said “Roots Squad”. I wore it to my parents’ place for dinner one evening and told my dad that I was in LSH’s Roots Squad. Only now am I realising how completely awkward that joke was. At the time, LSH went bright red and slid under the table. Not sure if he was embarrassed for himself or for me.

Anyway, occasionally we have some lost in translation moments. For instance, instead of saying orange, he said awnge. Of course he thinks I say oringe.  Instead of mirror he says meer. Again, LSH says that I say meeeroor. He says Ceyan wrap for Glad wrap or cling film. He seems to believe that I say porn shop instead of pawn shop (since we don’t actually frequent either establishment, you’d be surprised how much this comes up in conversation). Apparently the difference is that porn, as in buw chicka bup bow, is pronounced porn, whereas pawn, as in second hand, is pronounced pahan.

Occasionally, he’ll add an “A” to the end of sentences. So “let’s have lunch”, becomes “let’s have lunch A”. Oddly, and probably thankfully, for fear of my merciless teasing, he doesn’t say aboot.  So, after nearly eight years, I’ve grown accustomed to some of his vernacular and he mine. However, just this very morning, we had one of our “huh” moments.

I was sitting on the couch, eating my porridge, as I do, for breakfast. Our dog loves porridge, and since I have lactose free milk, she is often the happy recipient of my leftovers. So we sat, Ginger, the dog, with her head on my knee looking wistfully into my bowl of porridge, and me tyring to ignore just how cute she is when she wants something.

LSH pipes up with “she only has eyes for the porch.” Now, we don’t actually have a porch in our house, we have a front deck, but no porch. So, I said, thinking he has lost his mind from too much caffeine, and couldn't see the dog such was his hallucination, “but she’s right here, in front of you and in front of me.”

“I know,” he said, “she’s only interested in the porch.”

So now I’m thinking is he calling me a porch. Is he making comment about my thighs? Is my knee a porch? So while, perhaps, he might not say that I’m the size of a house, he would instead say that I’m a front porch?

“What are you talking about?” I said, starting to lose my patience, as I so often wrongly do when I don’t seem to understand something. I have a tendency to think it’s the other person not, as the case may be, my lack of intellectual ability.

“Your breakfast,” he raises his voice, “that” and points to my porridge.

I start laughing, “how on earth can you possibly think that porch is porridge?”

“It’s porch. Porch. How can you not understand that when I say porch I mean porch,” LSH is starting to get frustrated and sharply stabs his finger at my porridge.

“Uhm, because it’s porridge,” I say, slowly,  like I'm talking to an idiot. I think I'm being funny so much so that I start to laugh again and a little bit of spit and porridge may have fallen out of my mouth. LSH is trying to be stern but is having one of his Seinfeld moments where his voice raises an octave when he's trying to prove a point and not laugh all at the same time.


“Again, you’re saying paaawreedge. You should just say porch. It’s just like how you can’t seem to phonetically differentiate between pahan (pawn) and porn… ”

Here we go again. Half the fun of our relationship is never really understanding what the other person is saying.  Realistically, that’s probably why it works.

And the man said, "Racism is in our DNA"

Australia’s Race Discrimination minister, Graeme Innes, said, “Racism is an inevitable part of society and it’s almost part of our DNA,” last week when he spoke of a project to improve relations between the police force and Muslim communities.

There were millions of alarms bells clanging loudly in my mind when I heard this new piece. And I have two major concerns.

One. So, racism is almost part of our DNA? What this means is that hate based of ethnicity, race and colour and not personality, are inevitable.

If it’s part of our DNA, we can’t help it or stop it. If racism is as natural as our genetic strengths and weaknesses, then much like we can’t alter our propensity for disease, we also can’t alter our attitudes. Surely this makes programs such as teaching police officers how to interact fairly with the Muslim community, futile – well at least until genetic engineering becomes more commonplace.

We can throw money at anything, doesn’t means it’ll stick. Of course, my more politically astute and sometimes cynical LSH will say that it’s not the result that matters, it’s the perceived intention. If this is the case, the government is winning hand over fist. They have mastered the illusionist's trick – the art of diversion.

Two. If we need a program to help improve the relationships between police and the Muslim community, then I’d imagine we need a program to help police engage and relate to the Aboriginal community due to the overwhelming number of aboriginal deaths noted in police custody.

If we are hell bent on overcoming our genetic predisposition, surely we also need education programs in workplaces, in schools, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in suburban streets, in every single space that humans may inhabit.

However, for a moment, let's believe that racism isn't in our DNA and that it's a choice, why do we need these programs for the police force? Surely, the police, in upholding a least one corner of the moral flat sheet of our society, realise, understand and appreciate the laws protecting citizens from racism and if they don't they should, at the very least, not partake in negative behaviour. However, it seems that, unfortunately, the police force could potentially be one of the most corrupt, both morally and behaviourally, institutions on the planet. If Mr Innes is right and we have racism in our DNA, it would only be natural, literally, for there to be issues and they cannot be fixed. 

Since I disagree with Mr Innes and believe that racism is in fact a choice, surely the hiring practices should be more stringent for police force than they are for regular organisational roles. Perhaps attitude to race and ethnicity should be included in the psychological testing. Of course, not all police are corrupt, but as a group, as a mass under the microscope, there appears to be a lot of toxicity. And the toxicity spreads far and wide, initiated by all types of people, into parts of the community and into people's lives causing damage and pain.

For a community that constantly talks about being multicultural and respecting each other's differences, its astonishing that these types of scenarios with these outrageous comments are still commonplace and happen more often than anyone would think.