Heat by Rob O’Neill

Living with the Girlie is like crossing family life with shared accommodation. I flew back on Tuesday, arriving at my door with $3 in my pocket and all my accounts either blown out or inaccessible for tedious reasons I won’t go into.

I think beer might have been involved.

I’ve already told you about the plaintive calls from Sydney when I was in NZ, about the meltdown in the kitchen. When I checked the larder it was indeed a sorry sight. Girlie had eaten just about anything that could be eaten without turning on the stove or needing to be mixed with anything else.

With the $3 reserved for bus fare the next day, the options were limited. But there was, miracle of miracles, a can of tuna, some pasta and some sauce: Tuna bake!

I don’t have roaming so I’d left my mobile in my bedroom. When I switched it on there were eight messages, six from the Girlie, who didn’t realise the phone was just upstairs.

“Dad, call me urgently! I need to know how to cook refried beans!”

There used to be a can of refried beans in the larder, used for a quick taco meal with lettuce, salsa etc. I can imagine her now, warming it up and eating the brown sludge out of a bowl. Straight. On its own.

Yuk.

The house is a mess and someone has drunk most of my Scotch. Not just any old Scotch either, my Laphroaig, leaving me with the Ballantynes and a nip of McCallums that wasn’t there when I left.

The lights had all blown in the lounge and when I went to use the car the battery was flat.

On a positive, Girlie has always given me a hard time about my taste in music but I noted my LPs (yes I’ve still got ‘em and I pity all you bastards out there who sold yours), had been well and truly worked over. Turns out Girlie’s guests had really gotten into my old stuff. Sex Pistols on the turntable.

She’ll never hear the end of that.

It’s heading into Tropfest time here in Sydney. On the 23rd thousands will gather in the botanic gardens to watch 20-odd short films and a brief awards ceremony. Great idea, should be imported.

And the America's Cup has finally made an impact. Front page in the SMH. 3-0.

I’ve fallen way way behind in my New Zealand reading. I haven’t read Craig Marriner, the last two Chad Taylors, Lloyd Jones, maybe three Elizabeth Knoxes now, one Emily Perkins, any of the last three years worth of Landfalls or Sports.

Truth to tell I’ve virtually stopped reading, taking months to get through James Ellroy’s Cold Six Thousand. I stopped writing about four years ago.

Anyway, I was in Unity Books yesterday looking through the latest offerings and couldn’t help but be struck by the vitality of the local literary landscape. Sure it’s a small scene but the quality and quantity, I think, is high. Landfall has come on tremendously since its revival five years ago and looks and reads a treat. I also had a look through a Sport that was lying around, number 26 I think. Again terrific stuff, with a great photo portrait of seamy Wellington.

Both seem to have embraced art to a greater degree than in the past - to their benefit.

I’d heard the noise emanating from the Chad Taylor publishing machine even before I came back this week. As a fan from the days of his first published stories in Other Voices and Sport 5 (The wonderfully simple “Rusty Blades”), I went out on the net to see what all the fuss was about.

Imagine my shock when I found there’s a whole tribe of Chad Taylors out there, vying for fame in their own spheres. Lucky our Chad reserved his URL before we got into some serious cybersquatting.

One is another writer, author of A Cry of Harvest: “Chad Taylor is a burning fiery lamp in the wilderness of today’s religious systems. He’s a prophetic voice, awakening the hearts of men and women into passion and zeal for the lost.”

Indeed.

Or there’s Mad Chad Taylor, the chainsaw juggler:

“It’s amazing how many people want to watch you do something stupid,” says comedian Mad Chad as he juggles three running chainsaws, lights his finger on fire and catches a 15 pound anvil with his head.

There’s Chad the guitarist of Live, Chad the water polo player, Chad the drummer, and Chad the bit movie star from Kiss And Tell and The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh who now has a TV show I can’t even begin to understand.

And that’s just page one of a Google search!

Maybe someone should organise a Chad Taylor convention, or better take them all on tour. You’d have to buy a ticket with a lineup like that.

Coming back to Auckland after a couple of years in Sydney it’s hard to believe New Zealand’s utter obsession with the Auld Mug.

People talk of the team members as they would of footballers. They can name the afterguard and the familiar apostates on the other side. Some I know who hate sport with a passion are now following yachting avidly.

No one dares stand up and shout: “It’s only yachting guys!”

Technology is the difference – the coverage has to be seen to be believed. On-board cameras and microphones, helicopter shots, shots from every angle, computer simulations to show the relative advantages, directions, air shadows and so forth.

And then there’s the marketing and the press. Controversy has bred the “Loyal” campaign and thousands wore this stamped to their faces and arms over the weekend. Huge Loyal banners were towed by plane around the city and out into the gulf.

In one Parnell gallery the Loyal poster has been framed and put in the window over the weekend like a work of art. Café blackboards wished the team luck.

With the score now 2- 0 to Alinghi, some are starting to think about the implications of losing, and by and large their prognosis is dark. They say it will be bad for the country, the economy, and especially bad for Auckland. Knowing the gloom that descends after an All Black defeat, many will be gutted.

But it is only yachting, guys.

Most people outside of New Zealand – and maybe now Switzerland – don’t even know it’s going on. In Australia, the country that first wrested the cup from the New Yorkers and our nearest neighbour, there is hardly any coverage at all.

Over there there is only one sporting event on at the moment and that’s the Cricket World Cup. I have to phone my daughter to tell her what’s happening.

(Speaking of the Girlie, I left her with $200 for my week away. A few days ago I heard she'd run out of food. Apparently she spent all the money on clothes. Then she found some "insects" in the larder, threw a bunch of stuff out and sprayed the whole thing liberally with roach spray.)

The disconnect between the offshore interest in the cup – virtually nil – and the New Zealand obsession is stark. But then, like no other cup campaign, the New Zealand one is a national challenge and we have hitched our sense of nationhood and worth to the black boats. For better or worse.

It is not hard to imagine Auckland without the cup and in some respects it’s a better place. The cup is a psychological abberation and an economic distortion.

Cupless Auckland, painful as that may sound, is situation normal.

I flew in to sunny Auckland on Friday and immediately and unexpectedly got embroiled in a stag night around the viaduct.

All aged 30+ as far as I could see, we were playing drinking golf, a game in which 18 nominated drinks each get a par rating. You keep track of how many gulps you take at each to score.

By the end of the night no one was really scoring any more, and I guess that was the idea.

Having kipped down in Devonport, I made a leisurely ferry trip back, went out for a milkshake hangover cure, then a coffee and picked up the newspaper for a quiet afternoon.

Then it all fell apart. Gordon bloody McLauchlan. Will somebody put this crone out to pasture? Please!

Now I know columnists are supposed to rile you, but not by being stupid and incoherent. His column on Saturday said a lot about Gordie, but not a lot about anything else.

He starts off on youth suicide, which he admits he doesn’t know a lot about. Then makes the highly dubious claim that it is harder today for kids to be individualists than ever before.

Then this:

“I was in a bar recently and watched groups of young suits, you know, the guys who are supposed to be thinking laterally on our economy’s behalf. Every one of them was drinking a certain popular lager straight from the bottle, the worst way to drink any beer.

“Last year it was a different brand but it has been out-of-the-bottle for several years now. These guys are grown ups and they are slaves to conformity.”

Can’t you just imagine Gordie, sitting defiantly in the corner laying down a challenge by taking his turps the old-fashioned way. Those boys must have been quivering.

But, dash it all, someone has to take a stand.

Our leaders should take note. Several measures should be implemented pronto following Mr McLauchlan’s revelations.

People who drink out of the bottle should not be allowed to reach positions of authority in our society. We should immediately implement screening procedures, at our universities say, to ensure these conformists are weeded out.

Bottled beer should only be sold to brave individualists, our unheralded poets and artists, who will know how it is supposed to be drunk – poured into a fine, clear, cold glass.

These people should be easily recognisable, because they are, well, loners. They’ll probably be alone and dressed oddly.

Thank you Gordon. The road ahead is clear. Let’s take it, as a nation. Together.

As I said, Gordie, basking in his own superiority, managed to say nothing about nothing much. Personally, I think there’s poet among those suits. There’s probably a few who have families to raise and are doing it the best they can. One might be a paedophile. Another will resign next year, disillusioned, to become a teacher. Another will found a business empire and employ thousands.

Suits, like anyone else, are not black and white, no matter how they take their lager.

The school year has started and Girlie has more things to complain about. One of which, I agree, is almost inhuman: over here they have a school period called Period 0, which starts at 7.45 in the morning. And she’s got two of them a week!

Now I know we used to have these at Uni, in fact such timetabling could determine your course selections. “8am. No way! I’ll do Art History instead.” But to impose a 7.45 start on a 16-year old …

It was cloudy last weekend, robbing us of a chance to see the Mary of Coogee. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but an apparition has appeared on the Tasman foreshore. Mary. Mother Mary. The Virgin.

Jesus’ Mum.

To most people it looks like a white fence, butting up against a concrete wall, because that’s what it is, but the faithful say it’s a miracle. The way it works is if you stand a hundred yards away, across the sand, and look out at the southern headland between 3.45 and 4.15 of an afternoon the fence and the shadow it casts on the concrete wall present a vision.

Madonna (the original one), side on at first and then slowly turning to face you.

At first a few faithful souls gathered then the media got hold of it. There are now hundreds making a serious pilgrimage to see the Mary of Coogee - and thousands pouring out of the pubs, bars and backpackers to scoff.

Girlie has been highly amused.

And while we are on matters spiritual, just when I thought we’d laid the God’s breakfast issue to rest it’s been resurrected by a few more emails. Tim, in China, reckons “God will eat figs if she can get em.” Indeed he would, very much an Old Testament breakfast.

Chris B, in Auckland, says the question required his best upmarket thinking, so he asked himself, as you do, what Russell Hoban would tell his kids.

“... there is a mystery that even God cannot fathom, nor can he give the law of it on two Weetbix. He cannot eat what there are no bowls for; he needs milk on his cornflakes so he can dive into it, he needs bacon to make a sandwich with it, eggs to make French Toast and maple syrup to pour on it. He cannot eat it alone, he must find someone with whom to share his breakfast, and for this does he go to Strawberry Alarm Clock with some and to the Mink Bar with others.”

God made man in his own image, Christopher, not the other way round.

I suggested to Chris that the new testament might hold some clues. Is there any mention of what Jesus had for breakfast? We could be getting into deep theological waters here, of course. The Trinitarian controversy. For us Catholics, establishing what Jesus had for breakfast would answer the question emphatically because Jesus is one part of the Trinity that IS God. For just about everyone else that proves us Catholics are in cahoots with the Devil.

We didn’t answer that question, but Chris reckons whatever he had, Jesus’ Mum, like all mums, made sure he knew it was the most important meal of the day.