My refusal to support Orstralia on Saturday is drawing a bit of flack. People I know expect better of me. Not supporting England is just not good enough. You’re either with us or you are with the terrorists, sorry, imperialists, they say.
What more can you expect?
I told one, flippantly, by email yesterday “The Anzac spirit is dead, baby!”
I got back this simple but effective message: “You are scum.”
I was being flippant. I've had few more moving experiences than my trip to Gallipoli a couple of years ago. But one of the most moving things about that trip was the pom who came on our tour. We travelled round to The Neck, Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair and he finally asked when we were going to this particular beach, the place where his great-grandfather died.
The driver told him he'd have to catch a taxi. Nobody went to those places.
Aussies get very teary-eyed over Anzac. They take their foundation myths seriously over here. And that's fair enoungh.
But I’m not a bad loser, guys, by not supporting Australia. Nowhere in the book of sporting etiquette does it say that if you lose you must support Australia. Go on, give me the page number.
And let’s not forget WWII! While Orstralia pulled its troops back to the Pacific to defend the homeland, we Kiwis went to Greece, Crete, Italy and fought in the skies across Europe to defend the motherland. Not a lot of Anzac spirit there, was there? (Actually not a lot of common sense either!)
Correct me if I’m wrong, we simply don’t hate the poms as much as the Aussies do. Sure, they play a negative brand of rugger. Sure, they have a tendency to do victory laps even when they lose. Sure they think they’re God’s gift. Sure they joined the EC and stopped taking our butter…
But really, I don’t care who wins on Saturday. I care about it no more or less than I care who wins tonight. For us it’s over. I’m taking my ball and going home to mummy.
However, I have realized why we wear black as our national colour: it’s so we don’t need to get changed to go into mourning. Ha ha! I’m so funny!
I kill myself!
Speaking of WWII and Greece, I picked up a copy of Vinnie O’Sullivan’s biography of John Mulgan, Long Journey To the Border, on the way through the airport a couple of weeks back. It’s an excellent portrait of a unique individual, with cameos from a bunch of others of equal distinction. As one who grew up at a time when Man Alone was required reading at high school it fills in a bunch of gaps and misconceptions.
Mulgan was one of the most talented people ever to come out of NZ. And yet he was also someone who was totally grounded. He led an extraordinary, and short, life and left behind a unique contribution to our writing, without angsting over the “creation of a New Zealand literature” in the manner of most of his contemporaries. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about New Zealand, he didn’t care about “literature”. Literature with an “L” that is.
Also, he spent a lot of time sailing around the Hauraki Gulf before he went to Oxford. I haven’t spent a lot of time out there, just a bit, most recently on Tim’s little Raven, but I keep thinking about it, coming back to it. Here’s a theory, a uniquely Auckland definition of poverty: if you live in Auckland and you can get out on the gulf, you are rich. If you can’t you are poor. And it’s got nothing to do with money, really.
Anyway, read A Long Journey for a blast of what we were and where we came from and why we are so bloody independent in thought and deed.