The rural folks of my thoroughly friendly and upbeat Aussie flatmate from a small town near Brisbane rocked into town last night. I say near Brisbane. It is still probably 400 miles to their local newsagents, Give or take. They are travelling around the UK in a camper van for a month and with us for three days.
Within 5 minutes of arriving, they were drinking wine and Fosters in the back garden and farting. That was just his sweet mother. I was prepared for that. I was less prepped for some off-the-cuff remarks by his dad, who proceeded to express his relief at hearing a “pommie voice” with all the “nig nogs” at Heathrow. Golders Green was undoubtedly a bigger surprise since “he had only met two Jews in his life” and then he showed me, rather entertainingly, with his hands how we dress! The rest of the people he had met in his town of 120,000 were “Itis, spics, you name it”. After a couple more beers, there were, I learned, a lot of “bloody cants”, which from what I gather, come from Cantonia. I did not ask. I wondered what he would have thought to his son living with a gay bloke. His wife sat there smiling. Kath and Kim had landed in my back yard with much less class. After all the delightful jokes about Princess Diana, which I had heard 10 years ago and did not find them that amusing then, he went to show how at one with nature he is. “Just gonna have a leek over there mite,” pointing to our bushes, or worse still, our recently repaired fence. The last time I looked, I am sure that we had an upstairs bathroom.
This is not about Australia at all. Has anyone ever not fallen in love with that country’s way of life and its people? It is just small town ignorance. We know it is there but it never fails to baffle me when it appears. We have the urban version here in astonishingly multi-cultural London. It was recently highlighted by Emily in another Big Brother debacle. I am the last person on the planet to defend the social phenomenon that is Big Brother but I have to congratulate the show for doing what I failed to do. They reminded us that we are often flawed and imperfect and actually spoke out. They got a second chance after Shettygate. I’m sure, and I hope I will.
In the meantime, my room is locked. My window is bolted. We have the fire service on speed dial. I hope the house is still standing tonight. And that the toilet has somebody in it.
