27 June 2011

Pre-Dinner Pun Run

Three friends planning to dine together at a Thai Restaurant.

Jay: Let's Thai it down!

Rhys: That's thai-riffic then. Does 6.30pm suit... remember I am a nanna these days and I can't be home too late (you will see me starting to fade before your eyes).

Jay: Thai me kangaroo down, sport!

Max: Good lord girls, your puns are getting thai-ed.

Jay: I think I will have a big appeThait on Thursday ;P

Max: Thank goodness we are not on Thait budgets then ...

Jay: hopefully the food will be enThaising

Max: And the conversation will be enthai-taining ...

Jay: We had better be on Thaim because Rhys can't stay out too late

Max: I think you are right, she will be re-thai-ring early. You and I can go paint the thai-n red once she leaves though ...

Jay: I am signing off now as I am Thai-red of work. It's Thaim to go home. I will Thai my best not to think of any more puns.

2012
I warn each friend that their formally private exchanges are being mined for material, so I sent the above exchange to Jay and Rhys, and the below resulted:

Jay: Thanks for the enthaitainment.

Max: You were enthaitled to know you are going to be starring in a great lithairary endeavour!

Jay: It's going to be thaim consuming for you.
You can't thai a good pun down.

Axe-Bearing Barbarians: The Varangian Guard and the Image of the Money Making Viking

A wing-helmeted, axe-wielding barbarian leaping from a shield-hung longship onto a beachhead is perhaps the most enduring image of the Viking era held by the average modern punter.  The Vikings of 800 – 1100 were the terrifying wolves of the sea who dominated the Eastern trade routes and the Western sea lanes with their superior ships, their formidable military prowess and their lust for land and plunder.  The Vikings were not merely a bunch of axe brandishing, beer quaffing blondes only interested in taking the gold and the women and going back home.  The Vikings were an incredibly powerful and effective wealth accumulating people who tailored their methods of acquiring the wealth, land and persons of their victims to the different circumstances encountered.

The measures that the Vikings took to plunder wealth from the different arenas of Europe in which they operated were almost extreme in their dissimilarity.  In the eastern European countries that would eventually become Russia, the Vikings came ‘first as pirates, then as traders, and finally as the most trusted guards of the imperial person’[1] as well as being invited to become the ruling class of the lands they traded through.  Such a progression from pirate to Prince shows an exemplary use of influence and force to glean the most profit from the situation.  On the other hand, the rest of Western Europe were subjected exclusively to the pirate version of the Viking experience, while the British isles and beyond enjoyed the pleasures of certainly one and debatably two heavy waves of extensive settlement by the same ambitious warriors.

Of the many interesting careers available to the average Viking warrior wanting to leave home and pursue gold and girls across Europe, the top destination was the Varangian Guard, the exclusively Viking elite bodyguard of the mighty Byzantine Emperor based in the cosmopolitan Mecca of the eastern empire, Constantinople.[2] From a checkered past the Varangians Guards (Varangian being the name given to the Vikings in Eastern Europe) became a fighting unit that marched victoriously across Europe, was commanded at its peak by the indomitable Harald Hardradr and overthrew an Emperor.  A place in the Varangian Guard was regarded at home in Scandinavia as a position of great honor[3] and distinction.[4]

The Varangian mercenary guard in Constantinople was a legacy of the Russian Riurikid Princes jostling for power in the ninth century.  The Scandinavian settlers in Russia were ‘formerly the creators of trade networks and tribute-collecting states’[5] but increasingly became the shock troops of the Rus Princes jockeying for position and prestige.  As the original Rus settlers around Kiev, Novgorod and Lagoda developed a sense of nationality and established a power base, the new wave of Vikings travelling the Volga and the Dneiper river systems, known as the ‘Varangian Way’,[6] were increasingly viewed as interlopers and were hired as mercenaries.  Vladimir and Iaroslav especially, towards the end of the tenth century, used the Varangians against each other as well as against their Byzantine neighbors and sometimes allies to the south.  This created a situation that saw Varangians sent variously to attack and or serve the Byzantine Emperor as the mood of the Rus Prince or the terms of a treaty demanded.

This is a dichotomy in the role of the Vikings in the East that goes beyond even the inevitable currency of loyalty for money that mercenaries inevitably use.  A parallel instance of the Vikings playing two ends against the middle can be seen in the rest of Europe, with Danish, Swedish or Norwegian Vikings finding themselves in the position of being hired to protect a town from other Vikings.  Even more impressive is the extortion of the vast amounts of money paid by the British Kings through the Danegeld, to keep the Vikings to the Danelaw.  The image of Vikings as violent raiders of the coffers of Western Europe is eclipsed somewhat by their pure skill at securing profits from whatever situation was presented to them.

The Varangian Guard was the crack personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor and was made up of exclusively Scandinavian fighters until the end of the Viking period saw a new ethnic makeup of the Guard.  The Varangian Guard were not meant to be politically active in Byzantine, but served merely as a ‘mercenary center of excellence for all Viking military skills.’[7] As with the rest of the Viking influence in Europe, the political powers of the Varangians was greatest just before their fall.  In the case of the Guard, the exiled Norwegian King Harald Hardradr’s intercession in the rebellion against Emperor Michael brought the Guard into active political maneuvering within Constantinople.  The power of the Varangian Guard to topple an Emperor[8] was due to the triumphant tour of duty around the Mediterranean including the Middle East, Greece and Italy[9] that the Guard enjoyed under the leadership of the famous Norwegian expatriate.  The Vikings reached Sicily in this campaign and ‘an historian on the lookout for key moments might be tempted to see this event as the final completion of a Viking circle all around Western Europe.’[10]

This romantic Viking circle around Western Europe is further closed by the impact of the Norman invasion of England in 1066.  William the Conquerors triumph came only weeks after the defeat and death at Stamford Bridge of the Varangian Guards greatest alumni, Harald Hardradr.  Many historians like to claim that the Viking blood in the Normans renders the Norman invasion the last and most successful Viking invasion of Britain. After 1066 the Varangian Guards ethnic makeup changed dramatically to include ‘Anglo-Saxon and Danish champions, chafing under Norman rule’,[11] changing the Guard from a purely Viking enterprise to one that included the descendants of one wave of Viking invasion escaping from the second wave,[12] ‘a most curious consequence for an offshoot of the Norsemen in the east of the activities of the Norsemen in the West.’[13]

This prestigious role for the Vikings in the East of providing rulers and their armies was very different to the Viking raiding of the rich monasteries and towns of Western Europe and the raiding and settling of the Vikings in the British and surrounding Isles.  The difference was in the plundering of wealth; in the West the wealth was already accumulated and stored in central towns and monasteries while in the East systems had to be established to accumulate the wealth themselves.[14] Thus, instead of the role of despoiler of the infrastructure of wealth creation they embraced in the West, in the East the Vikings built and administered the infrastructure for amassing wealth themselves.

The three centuries of the Viking Empire were centuries in which Vikings took up their axes, took to their boats and took what they liked from Europe.  They established the Eastern European trade routes, raided with impunity the treasure houses of West Europe and settled in the lands of the British Isles and beyond.  With their military prowess and tenacity they ruled Russia, campaigned for the Byzantium Empire, looted Europe and conquered the islands between their homeland and America, yet the different circumstances of each area of enterprise was treated with it’s own unique style.  As a people they set out into the world to make their fortune and they made a place in history for themselves through their success.  Not bad, really, for a bunch of blondes.

Bibliography

Dawkins, R. M., 1947, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard : Some Notes’, The Journal of Roman Studies, London : Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, pg 39-47.

Griffiths, P. 1995, The Viking Art of War, Greenhill Books : London

Jones, G., 1907, A History of the Vikings, Richard Clay Ltd : Suffolk.

Page, R.I., 1995, Chronicles of the Vikings, Records, Memorials and Myths, University of Toronto Press : Toronto Buffalo.

Sawyer, P., 1997, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, Oxford University Press : New York.

Magnusson, M., 1980, Vikings!, Bodley Head Ltd: London

---

[1] Dawkins, R. M., 1947, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard : Some Notes’, The Journal of Roman Studies, London : Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies p 39.

[2] Magnusson, M., 1980,  Vikings!, Bodley Head Ltd: London, p 120.

[3] Magnusson, Vikings!, p 296.

[4] Page, R.I., 1995, Chronicles of the Vikings, Records, Memorials and Myths, University of Toronto Press : Toronto Buffalo., p 84.

[5] Sawyer, P., 1997, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, Oxford University Press : New York., p 155.

[6] Dawkins, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard’, p39.

[7] Griffiths, P. 1995, The Viking Art of War, Greenhill Books : London, p 61.

[8] Page, Chronicles of the Vikings, p 103.

[9] Magnusson, Vikings!, p 297, Jones, G., 1907, A History of the Vikings, Richard Clay Ltd : Suffolk., p 266.

[10] Griffiths, The Viking Art of War, p 61. Ernie, I know this is perhaps a Cosmo reference, but almost every second author I read likes to get misty-eyed about the Normans, the English and the Vikings being one big happy axe-bearing family of European conquerors!

[11] Magnusson, Vikings!, p 296.

[12] Dawkins, ‘The later history of the Varangian, p 40.

[13] Jones, A History of the Vikings, p 266.

[14] Sawyer, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, p 135.

22 June 2008

From the diary, Yallingup:
Last night I finished North and South and went out to the beach and cried. I cried for my self-indulgence, I cried for my lack of self-control, I cried because I have no reason to cry at all, and I must remember that above all else. I looked at the dunes, at the waves, at the stars and I knew that I may be small and brief in this life, but all the light of the stars meets only in my eyes, no matter who else looks at them, and my life is wonderous because I am so glad to be living it, in my own good company.


The sea is silver, and is leaching out the colour of the sky. The wind is like a gale around the house, making up for the days of calm. This has been one of the best holidays ever, because I cannot be sad to go home. My mind is so rested it cannot conceive of not always being so.


I long to go adventuring again because I have an excuse to be alone in spectacular places again. To bring out the twin of this journal and mark the pages with this pen. To record my own life, in my own terms, while walking down streets that are mine because I see them, know them and love them. Streets that will be British, or Irish, or Scots, but part of me nevertheless. I get such extraordinary shots of desire for the UK at the strangest times, when my mind wails that I cannot see with my eyes, only my heart.


But as I told Yallingup beach last night, I will be gone faster than either of us can suppose, and there is sure to be adventure in the meantime. And when I am gone, there will be times when my body will seek to be right here with a longing that will be fit to burst my heart. At least I have such a place to love, to share, to return to as I grow up.


I must retain this ease and self-care through the next through months … I must stand strong and keep the thought of the midnight beach long in my mind.


On the drive home Camera One came on, and I seized upon the lyrics ‘You’re playing you now’ And that is the answer to this entire situation. I need to be me, not me ‘playing’ either me or what people think I should be, I should be doing things my way.


And once home I got into bed and reached down to read one of my journals from London. It was was the 2005 one and at one point in a rant about how much I didn’t want to go home, I observed that I am always so reliant on my own good humour, interest and ability to entertain myself.


I have a lot of strengths.

20 June 2011

From the email:

and God said unto Woman 'I gave you Eyes because I gave Men Bums. And I expect Woman to ogle Men's Bums (and Virile Beards) with aforementioned Eyes or I shall strike your Eyes out. Aye, your Eyes ... you know what, I will use that somewhere else in the Bible. An Eye for an Eye. I am a genius God. Booyah. Bums.'

20 June 2005

From the diary:

I am having such a brilliant time being the undeservingly deported. I have a very charming line in self-pitying humour that manages to amuse while it emphasises that I am very wronged by fate. I am in a very good mood now that I am going out every night now. It really is my lifeblood, this meeting of people each day to make me think different thoughts. I am so reactive that I can only think my best thoughts on the go.

2012
I distinctly remember the difficulty I had with finding an equilibrium between enjoying my last months in London and wanting to wallow endlessly in my sadness at leaving. I found the most effective way to cope with the complex feelings was a wry and acidic comedy routine that tore Perth apart while showing my London cool factor. One of my most treasured comments from my last two months was a friend exclaiming at the news I was leaving to go home; 'But you are such a good Londoner! You can't leave!'

Meanwhile, on Insanely Sociable

18 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Monday 21 June 2004

Random Beauty

I sought out beauty today*, travelling to the ‘Sequenza and the Artea Quartet’ concert at the Royal Academy of Arts. Max was going and it sounded like something that we would enjoy – after all, how can you go wrong with classical music?

....welllllll, it can be modern classical music for one.

4 young things in suitably dark attire took the stage and – in a flutter of seriousness befitting gouty men 3 times their age – began the first piece, ‘String Quartet’ by Philip Venables.


You know you’re in trouble when the tuning was more melodic than the performance.

Remember The Music playing in That Shower Scene from That Hitchcock Movie? 


Remember the music from ‘Jaws’? I did when I heard this, because it essentially sounded like a rap remix of the two. (No, I’m not exaggerating – I leave exaggeration to the times when I’m talking about the sharks I caught off Perth’s coast one weekend…they’ve steadily grown from 2 foot to larger than a Cadillac.)


The sounds were intentionally random, but they teased you. You thought that perhaps you could catch some pattern or latch onto a sound and follow it through – then it was completely cut off by a violin screech so high and so loud that you could actually see the rippling shudder of discomfort from the audience.


Tortured chords – sometimes beautiful – always murdered by the surrounding cacophony emerged to give the audience brief hope, some melody, some beauty to latch on to. These respites from the overall horror were fleeting – as was my attention.


As if on queue, all three of us hunted pens and began scribbling frantic notes to each-other. I knew I was in for a rough ride until the Stravinsky later in the concert, so settled in to write this blog post (no need to make it a complete waste of time).


Venables himself led the orchestra onto the stage for the second piece. He took the opportunity to explain what it was that we had just heard. (New from the RAA! Music so darned incomprehensible that it needs freakin’ subtitles!). 


The rabble that had followed him onto the stage included :


- A girl intent on showing us that she could have been a plumber’s assistant through the subtle and post-modern use of too-low-slung-hipsters.


- Another girl who was too damn cool for this whole classical music gambit and would prove it to us by having a crop-top under her too small suit jacket, a pudgy little belly hanging out, piercings galore and hair gelled at every angle bar ‘down’.


- The flautist in an exquisite black gown…and sequinned red shoes.


- The singer, a barely groomed urchin of a girl whose fuchsia, pink and orange dress could have done with some serious ironing.


Am I being a purist? Perhaps a little. There are certain standards that an orchestra should maintain – some decency of appearance. Respect goes both ways.


He spoke about ‘chopping’ bits and pieces together, he spoke about inspiration, he spoke about ‘layers’. He smiled an awful lot – the kind of smile you see on a kid explaining why the hell his hand is stuck in the cookie jar in the first place. I wasn’t quite sure what the sneering little gimp wanted from me – adoration or for me to laugh along at his little joke on the world.


He finished by stating that the Stravinsky ‘Pastorale’ would be ‘…just…well…nice!’ compared to his music. He gave the imploring look of one fishing for a compliment. What the hell were we supposed to do? Stand up and shout:

“No, no, Mr Venables – I want to hear more of your music, I do. Just let me readjust my skin – it seems to be crawling its way to the exit.”

He also took the opportunity of explaining the next piece to be played, Luciano Berio’s ‘O King’. Mentioned something about the ‘tranquil surface’ of the piece being ‘almost unnoticeably disturbed’ by the piano.


The ‘subtle’ piano sounded like an overweight cat with distemper suspended from the ceiling by a bungee cord was landing on the keyboard at unfortunate moments.


What talent the flautist had was drowned out by the random screechings of the rest of the orchestra.


As for the role of the singer, well, that’s an interesting one indeed. It seems that ‘O King’s lyrics are in fact simply the words “O Martin Luther King” sung very slowly. Once. Vvvvvveeeeeeeerrrryyyyyy ssssslllllllloooooowwwwwwwwllllyyyyyyyyy.


Oh yeah – kwality with a capital ‘k’ there.


The brief break as the stage was reset for the next piece (Venables’ ‘I Fed My Wardrobe to the Night Wind’) was a welcome respite. The silence was blissfully harmonious.


Phil certainly fed his wardrobe to the night wind. The wind let out an almighty belch. Phil took it down verbatim.


There was some random melody to the piece, but by this time I wasn’t sure if I would latch onto ANYTHING after being battered by the beastliness of it all. The piece was relegated the place it deserved in my attention – as background music to my frantic search for a new pen as the venom had run out of the first.


When a piece of good classical music starts, I feel my entire body relax. I exhale as I settle into the luxurious cushion of sound that envelops me.


When this tripe started, I realised that I had been holding my breath in anticipation – and all I wanted to do was take another sharp breath in as a buffer to the sound. My neck was tense, my shoulders were tense, my calves were knotted as if my entire body was poised to sprint the hell out of the hall.


It ended mercifully quickly; all we were left with was one….more….piece…..of …..trash until I could hear something composed by a man of any measurable talent. (Although Venables DOES have talent – it’s quite difficult to make completely random sounds, as we found on the way to the tube when we tried to emulate what we had just heard.)


The last test of my patience was Luciano Berio’s ‘Opus Number Zoo’. Four musicians had been planted in the audience. They donned feathered masquerade half-masks and jumped up on their seats, barefoot. They began to make animal noises. I realised I was grinding my teeth.


There followed a drawn out pantomime with wildlife themes, a little bit of instrument playing, a whole lot of vitriol-filled-poetry spitting and – somehow – an anti-war message weaved in with all the subtlety of a drag queen at the Mardi Gras.


I was particularly offended at the players stalking the audience, using their instruments to emulate rifles. Blatantly giving menacing looks and shoving the instruments in the audience’s face. As I said, subtle.


So I had paid my price, Stravinsky was next.


What a difference!


Although not my favourite composer, it was a surprising pleasure to listen to the singer. (A soprano! Who would have thought, given her shocking ill-use in the last set?)


Suddenly the full, rich, disciplined voice was released. She stood differently, her shoulders back. She looked (and sounded) like a magnificently talented individual instead of the seeming street urchin reedily gasping out nonsense earlier.


She made an absolute dog’s breakfast of the Russian pronunciation in the lyrics but it didn’t detract from the piece terribly. I suspect that no-one else in the audience was really the wiser. In fact it was fascinating to see how she broke up the words. The music was Japanese-influenced and she broke where the music did. The overall effect was a strange ‘Japanisation’ of the Russian words into short vowel-ish sounds. Sometimes, though, she hit it – and when she did it was worth all the rest. Perfect.


So I didn’t find beauty in any quantity at the concert, certainly not enough to give satisfaction.
We headed home (via M’s office as he was on call and the Paris server had decided to save him from the last bit of the concert). We all had dinner at the office’s cafeteria, watched a bit of TV, fraternised with the night shift, had a couple of laughs. Heading home, we agreed that the latter bit of the evening took most of the sting out of the disappointment of the former. I had pretty much stowed the whole thing away as a C- on the report card of the evenings of my life.


Deciding to run down the escalators to get some nervous energy out, I reached the bottom and suddenly, jarringly, stopped – as had many others.


On the concourse separating the two platforms was a man with a violin playing the third movement of ‘Summer’ from Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.


He played so beautifully, so precisely. The glorious sounds echoing off walls – staving off the insipid announcements about not leaving baggage unattended and the thundering roar of arriving trains. The passion for this music was evident in the way his whole body moved, in the tension of his hands and fingers, echoed on the involuntary expression on his face. This was what those young players were mimicking so badly. Passion for music isn’t something one puts on like a morning suit – it is something that one lets out. It’s a radiance, not a scowl.


Leaning against the coolly tiled wall of the underground, I listened to the kind of music I had been begging for all afternoon just handed to me randomly in the most unexpected place. M and Max caught up with me and soundlessly stood next to me, listening as well. We stood though a couple of pieces, exchanged expressions of surprise at his talent, dropped some money into his case and caught our train.


I stood in the crowded, airless carriage and closed my eyes as the train jolted on its way. I replayed the music for myself, extending it from my memory of the piece, enjoying it again and again. I think I grinned a bit much, people were looking at me.


I walked home with a smile on my face.



* Written on Friday, typed out today in between packing everything to move house. 

10 June 2010

From the email:

I was brought up by passionate beef farmers, which meant that I ate red meat every day growing up. Once my parents started breeding cattle, we ate meat that came from animals that we named and got to know. The footage that Four Corners put on the screen was disgusting for me to watch because I know cattle, and those terrified eyes were the eyes of animals that did not deserve to die in that manner.

But I eat meat, and will for quite a large portion of my life, and while I understand (and am secretly quiet excited about the idea) that the tradition of farming animals for meat will soon become a luxury and then disappear all together, there is another side to the story. No cattle owning family in Australia wants to see the cattle they breed and spend every day looking after treated as they were in the footage on Four Corners. That is not why farmers get into the business, it is not why they stay in the business and it is not why they work so hard.

So in the interest of not being hypocritical, I would like to publish this letter, forwarded to me by my Mum.

It is an excellent letter. People need to know that if they don't want to eat animals, they should be vegetarians. And if they are too lazy to be vegetarian and still hold that animals should magically not die for meat, they need to look openly at what killing an animal means. You have to know the price of the decisions you make.

The price applies to everything, the China Price of the components that make up the Mac I am typing on, the political and economic freedom I enjoy as an Australian woman that is not even conceivable to most of the women of this planet. A society is judged by how they treat those they can legitimately exploit under the current economic and political systems – animals, women, those who work in service and manufacturing, indigenous populations. Humans cannot survive without exploitation, but when we exploit, we should be able to look it in the face for what it is.

Dear Sir,

I must introduce myself. My name is Scot Braithwaite and my life has basically revolved around live export since I was 10 years old. I was unloading cattle boats in Malaysia at the age of 13. I have worked for all the major cattle companies including as a Head Stockman in the Northern Territory. I have a degree in economics from the Queensland University and I personally have sold more than 1.5 million head of cattle into Indonesia since 1991. I am presently employed as the marketing manager for Wellard rural exports.

I am writing to you after the Monday program to say that although I abhor the treatment of the animals shown in the video, your one sided approach to the subject and the possible effect of that of a ban on live exports is too big a price to pay for a report based on the evidence of an organization that’s charter is to shut us down. I have the following points to make. I would like to have the same time as those who denigrated my life to show you the other side of our industry. To show you what is really going on. In Australia there used to be thing about “A fair Go”. You have gone with images provided by one person followed up by your investigative journalist who spent a week in Indonesia. Your report makes out that close to 100% of Australian cattle are treated as was shown on TV.

1 the ship that appears in the footage “for less than 30 seconds” is a vessel that cost tens of millions of dollars to build. We have had 3 separate media groups sail with this ship and it can in no uncertain terms be described as best in class. The Wellard group has another 3 vessels of the same standard with another 2 being built in China. This is a total investment of 400 million dollars to ensure that livestock exports from Australia are undertaken at the utmost levels of cow comfort and animal welfare.

2 the feedlot that was filmed was given a 10 second view. This feedlot is without a doubt world class. Your viewers should have at least had the opportunity to view large numbers of cattle eating and sleeping comfortably in a fantastic facility. This company has in addition moved to kill all his cattle through stunning system that he has control of. This owner has spent 20 years of his life in the industry, has built his business from nothing, has done all that is required of him from an animal welfare point of view yet your reporter makes no mention of these things.

3 within A 3 HOUR DRIVE OR a 15 Minute helicopter there are another 3 world class facilities. All three feedlots including the one filmed, are at, or better than, what can be found in Australia. The cattle being fed, and the ration being fed, leads to a lot less animal health issues then a similar size operation in Australia.

One of these facilities is operated and owned by a large Australian pastoral house. They had no mention in your supposed unbiased report. The operation is run by a North Queensland man who, through His absolute dedication to excellence has built a feedlot and slaughtering system that his company, the industry and himself can be very proud of. The system is closed, all the cattle are already killed through their own abattoir. They import 20 to 25000 cattle year. They have been doing this for at least 5 years.

Why should they be shut down? For what reason could anyone justify closing this operation down, especially without even bothering to look at what goes on.

4 the other world class feedlots that could have been investigated with a 3 hour ride in the car are owned by a large publicly listed Indonesian company. In all, they have on feed 50,000 cattle and import about 120,000 cattle a year. They have recently built an abattoir( the one that was briefly shown on the program) They built this 2 years ago as they knew that modern methods must come to Indonesia and they were willing to make the investment to make it happen.

The total investment from these 3 feedlotters alone in infrastructure and stock is over 100 million dollars. Add to that the hundreds of millions that Wellard have recently invested in ships and do you really believe that these people would leave the final product to a murderous bastard with a blunt knife? They not only have tried to ensure the welfare of the animal but have made investments to make the changes all along the chain. These people deserve to have their side of the story heard. If the system is not perfect, and it isn’t, they have the wherewithal and the incentive to make it happen in a very short time.

These 3 importers who have shown a commitment to everything good about animal production, handle 45 % of total imports.

The other major issue that was not covered was the social responsibility that all feedlotters in Indonesia practice. Their operations are in relatively isolated poor areas; the feedlots provide employment opportunity,  advancement through effort, and a market for thousands of tons of feedstuffs grown for the cattle. My understanding is that 8000 people are directly employed by the feedlots and over 1000000 people are reliant on the regular income made from supplying corn silage and other feedstuffs. This is not made up, it is fact. It can be easily checked. I will bet my 1000000 farmers against the 1000000 signatures on the ban order. It is very easy to sit in your comfortable chair and criticize but is it really worth the human cost to ban something that can be fixed and fixed reasonable quickly?

That is Sumatra.

In JKT there is the largest privately owned abattoir that kills about 4 to 6000 heads a month. It is a well run facility that has no welfare issues. In addition it was working on getting a stun system in place well before the 4 corners report.  No photos from here, yet this is another who has been doing the right thing and who will lose his business if the trade is banned.

The largest Importer in to Jakarta, has also built a slaughter facility in the past 12 months. It has not been commissioned yet but can be made ready within a month. They also have a private bone to pick with the program. AS was not reported in the show, abattoirs in Indonesia are operated by any number of individual ‘Wholesalers”. They control the space and the manpower kills their number for the night and then hand over to the next team. In any one night 8 to 10 separate operators can be using the same facility. In the case of the footage of the head slapping the camera panned to the cattle waiting and the tags of AA, Newcastle Waters and his company were made very prominent. Yes, they were there but the team that handled was different to one being filmed. They protest, that their crews are well trained, no head slapping occurs and very large and sharp knives are used to ensure a bloody but quick end. I have no reason to doubt them because I have seen a lot of their cattle handled at point of slaughter and their crews are well trained with immediate results. Where can their case be heard?

I have watched literally thousands of cattle slaughtered in the boxes in Indonesia. Yes there are problems, as there are at every point of slaughter on every type of animal in the world, but 98% of the cattle I watched killed was quick and without fuss. Why is there not one shot of what happens 98% of the time?  The shots of outright cruelty are totally unacceptable and the slaughter of cattle is still gruesome and confronting but is not as prevalent as portrayed in your report. Yes it does some times happen but it is the exception not the rule. And we are already taking steps to improve the system and we have the ability to ensure all animals are stunned in a very short time.

Yes there are a couple of operators who in the short term will not be able to handle the new way. But they will be dropped, no commitment to stunning, no supply. No negotiation. There are also a number of operators privately owned who were, to all intents and purposes, doing the right thing. They were asked to supply through the boxes and they have. They will be asked to only supply though a stunning FACILITY and they will. They have far too much invested in the whole industry over many years to not do as we ask.

I am asking for a fair go. You have been expertly manipulated. Hear the actual other side of the story let the Australian public see both sides. I am happy to make all the arrangements. This is too important to let sit with the images you portrayed on Monday without recourse.

Scot Braithwaite

9 June 2006

From the diary:

I truly turned 25 this year, but it was months after my party that I actually encountered the conditions that made me a 25 year old.

It is weird to think that my brother had to tell me that I would not be able to fudge my Honours. I prefer not to think of my skills as skills in fudging, but as skills in bending people as nicely as possible to my will! The power rush I feel as another person ruefully admits that I am too fast, too funny, too clever, too quick. I am not a dead person, I am quick one!

8 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Tuesday 8 June 2004

Flat-Max

Having an actual flatmate around serves many purposes – some more immediately apparent than others. We thought we were just giving Max a place to live in London and sharing the hideous burden of the rent – but there’s quite a bit more to it than that:

I’ve found that the little habits I thought were perfectly normal are – in fact – exceptionally freakish.

__________

1.

Singing.

Max came home the other day and gave me a small, fierce look, saying:

“Oh god, I’ve started singing.”

Which I thought wasn’t really such a bad thing, I certainly didn’t see what all the fuss was about and told her so.

“But you don’t understand, I’ve picked up your habit of singing about everything during the day – taking a song and playing around with the lyrics.” Her tone picked up a bit on the hysteric-o-meter. “And I’m doing it AT WORK!”

Ahh.

Trying to avoid the glare, I recommenced the carrot-chopping but it’s difficult to do when someone is quite insistently drilling psychic holes in the side of your skull. I didn’t even realise I had begun singing about Max’s singing (to the tune of something from The Lion King) until I looked up and saw her as close to causing me bodily harm as I could have ever imagined. I think I’ve got to start curbing that one.

__________

2.

Apparently, making words up isn’t ‘normal’.

Much as I adore the English language, sometimes its tapestry doesn’t afford me the particular shade and texture I require to describe something. M has long ago observed this and reconfigured his brain to deal with it. Max, on the other hand, stops me mid-flow to ask me what on earth I just said.

My reasoning is that language was made up by people in the first place. It’s not like a dictionary morphed into being one day and we all began speaking English in the same way. We STILL don’t speak English the same way – I’ll wager that if you heard me speak you would find that my Australian accent is ‘strange’ and that you don’t know some of the terms I use.*

I’ll wager that the first guy who looked at his herd of sheep and thought of the word ‘fluffy’ was laughed at too. I’m willing to risk being ridiculed so that future generations can benefit from words like:

• Thinkling – small thought. Not a particularly deep rumination deserving the moniker ‘Thought’, just something small yet significant at the present moment.

• Wifelet – professional wife. A creature whose days are split between beauty salons, designer rag outlets and cafes. She does buy books – but only because their spines match the rug. Can be found hanging barnacle-like off her husband at premieres and parties.

* No Wuckers, for example. Third generation slang:

No fucking worries > No wucking forries > No wuckers

Don’t look at me like that.

__________

3.

Being hermit geeks.

We’ve stopped being such hermit geeks. There are two eras, Before Max (BM) and After Max (AM). Max did influence us from afar, but it was far more like the moon’s gentle tug on the tides rather than the screaming asteroid plummeting into our social life that marks the AM era.

BM – Weekend entailed replenishing food supplies, cleaning and settling in for long (“Sheesh, sunlight already?”) bouts of gaming. Over the years, I became somewhat of a party trick at LANs. The girl who could frag your ass nicely in Quake or passionately discuss the differences between being a Sorcerer or Wizard in an RPG.

AM – Weekend entails stumbling to the kitchen to have Max inform me that someone (insert random friend) is coming over in an hour. Eyes snap open to assess cleanliness of abode, mind starts going through contents of fridge, mouth starts gabbling things about lunch, hands reach for serviettes and start folding them into origami-esque shapes. Max switches on a computer screen and gently guides me to a chair – she knows it’ll keep me in thrall for a couple of hours so that she can complete her dastardly socialisation plan.

BM - Diary had the standard stuff in it. Business appointments, dental checkups,

AM - Diary is now a random assortment of chocolate-box social nibbles. Plenty of things 'to maybe do'. I knew things had changed in my life when last weekend's entry looked something like:

* Buy a fan at Argos

* Call Andy re: lease

* Cheese Rolling festival in Glouchestershire? (Check health insurance if we participate)

Max realised early on that we’re not shy; we just enjoy being at home and with each other. She also figured that we’re good mixers at parties, so we occasionally get dropped into a fray to stir things up a little. Cleverly, she ensures that we navigate the flotsam on our own as the effect of us both interrogating a person isn’t pretty.

__________

4.

Debating teams.

Max now changes the friendly-argument-typology in the house. It’s no longer a détente when some obscure topic is discussed and the ‘net can’t help – there’s a knowledgeable little critter around that doesn’t always take my side.

I have plans to fix this little hiccup in my life, but so far none of the ‘Find Omnipotence Now!’ products have kicked in. Bother.

__________

5.

An overabundance of me-ness.

I have found that friends need to be warned about me before I’m allowed to meet them. I hear about someone from Max for a couple of weeks and tell her to bring them on over…and am informed that they’re not ‘ready’ to meet me yet.

This brings to mind some sort of Getting Ready To Face M Boot Camp held in an Equatorial forest in Guinea. Attendants are battered senseless with questions, have all their premises challenged and are openly told that some of their ideas aren’t just a little wacky but outright stoopid. They are then introduced to the finer points of Pun-Pong* and assaulted with rounds of I’m Going To Sing About You To The Tune Of A Disney Song. If they survive with (most of) their limbs intact, they progress to The Meeting.

I really don’t know what it is that Max tries to instil in these people, but most that I’ve met so far have been rather normal, decent humans. Some have a limp though….

* Pun-Pong. Someone drops an appalling pun into a conversation. Participants (anyone who hasn’t withered away from the sheer badness of the original pun) must then come up with their own pun to counter the last. The pun must be on the same general theme. Footrubs and shoulder massages have been bestowed on the last punner standing in particularly savage rounds. This is a very, very difficult game.

__________

For someone who grew up as an only child, having someone like Max around is discovering what it’s like to have a sister (albeit a well behaved, intelligent, lively sister that doesn’t kick me under the table or acquaint toads with my bedsheets). It’s a view on me from a friendly and close source that isn’t a parent or a lover and it’s decidedly interesting.

8 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Tuesday 8 June 2004

Paddling

I have searched far and wide, physical store and virtual warehouse. There are officially no pedestal fans in all of London, England. This is not unlike the situaion LAST summer. Do the stores here learn? No. It's a hell of a lot more fun to have merchandise on shelves that doesn't move and angry customers asking why the hell an electrical appliance store still doesn't have any fans (even though we asked last week and the week before and the week before...)

So M and I have been emailing back and forth over the sane-ness of buying a severely overpriced, tatty-boxed fan displayed in a store window nearby. The store itself is one of those that seems to be plagued by Trek-like time bubbles. The window display features said fan, various (sound, video) cards for computers and a TV so old that it has wood-effect laminate on it's sides.

The email I received from M a few moments ago:

Creek.*

You.

Me.

No Paddle.

Argument.

Fight.

Pokes, prods and scratches.

You saying you're right.

Me talking you down.

You saying I'm right without believing it.

Resignation at situation.

Me fixing the (now) broken equipment in the canoe.

You coming up with an inventive solution involving paperclips.

Me admitting it's nutty but could work.

Max no longer laughing at us from the creek bank, throws rope.

We reject rope to see if paperclip idea works.

We start playing with more paperclips.

We drift downstream after an enjoyable day...

* Australian expression for being in trouble: "Up shit creek without a paddle." This the poetry of a nation that doesn't dance around issues. God, do I miss it.

3 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Thursday 3 June 2004

Tate debate

Max is my culture-vulture friend and recent flatmate. I don’t use the term 'culture-vulture' in it’s usual ‘look, the two words rhyme! How cute!’ sense, I literally mean a vulture of the cultural morass that is most people’s social calendar.

She swoops down on the twitching remains of one’s empty weeknight and lifts it in the air, soaring on a headwind of British Museum gallery talks and Proms in the park, bypassing the fetid gully that is most popular entertainment to deposit you in a nest lined with Thackeray, Austen and Wilde novels where she proceeds to gorge herself on your free time. Other than that, she’s a really nice person.

Max is so much a social hub over here that she has her own monthly digest of things ‘to do’ out and about in London. She forces us all to be a little more cultured, occasionally at the point of something sharp - like her wit.