It was over 30C at 9am on Sunday morning, having not dropped into the twenties for at least 48 hours. Factor 30 sunscreen already applied, I dressed in white linen head to toe, and added a narrow-brimmed straw hat before braving the outdoors. I stood for over half an hour in already searing heat waiting for the bus to take me to the city. People drove past in air-conditioned cars, the windows sealed shut. One woman rollerbladed down the middle of the road at speed, her orange Thai fisherman’s pants billowing.
The tram to the Australian Open was full (public transport is included in your ticket to the Open and many other sporting events in Melbourne). As we disembarked, a staff member announced by loudhailer that due to the “extreme weather” (now over 40C just before noon) all play was suspended in the outside courts. Undeterred, I brandished my Gold Enclosure ticket and strolled past picnickers and merchandising sellers to the Rod Laver Arena – the “centre court” of the Australian grand slam event.
Being a temp has some advantages: the company I have been working for since December has a big corporate entertainment budget for the Australian Open, and this was one of the things I had been administering during my time with them.
A few days ago the whole of the Sunday afternoon’s allocation pulled out, and the General Manager decided staff would go in their place. Delighted, I joined five other women for a girl’s day out at one of the most prestigious tennis events in the world. Marvellous.
My seat was only five rows from the baseline, and would have been in the shade except, mercifully, they had closed the roof. As the temperature wandered way past 40C outside, I sat with my colleagues in beautiful air-conditioned comfort with an ice-cold bottle of water in hand.
We caught the last set of a men’s doubles match, cheering the US’ Bryan twins to victory. I was just as entertained by the stylised movements of the young ballboys and ballgirls though. The girls borrowed my binoculars to celebrity-hunt in the crowd while I got a text message from one of the very few people I know in Melbourne – I had been spotted on TV!
We broke early to grab a bite to eat in the corporate entertainment area, washed down by a glass or two of chilled champagne of course. Back at our seats we enjoyed the last half of a women’s game between Lindsay Davenport and Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova: Davenport won in two fairly easy sets.
Next up was the fourth-round meet between number two seed Andy Roddick (opposite) and the 20-year-old Cypriot unseeded player, Marcos Baghdatis. Roddick was all set to win, of course; he has almost always got at least as far as the quarter-finals in Melbourne. But the young Cypriot had other plans. Sparred on by a small but amazingly vocal blue-and-white army of fans in the gods, he gave as good as he got, breaking Roddick’s serve more than once, and delivering quite a few lengthy volleys not usually seen outside women’s tennis. Hugely entertaining tennis. The underdog won the first set with relative ease, Roddick fighting back in the second.
By the beginning of the third set the atmosphere was electric: many people in the crowd were shouting support for Roddick but nothing could compare to the onslaught of shouting and chanting from Baghdatis’ fans in blue after every point was scored.
I wondered about this: in a city with the biggest Greek population outside Greece, why were they supporting the American? My colleague finaly explained: they were supporting him because he was losing. Australians traditionally support the little guy, it seems, although nobody would have expected world number three Roddick to be cast in that role today.
We were at the edge of our seats as Baghdatis fought back again and again. Each game was hard won, stuck at advantage/deuce for three, four, five plays. Before we knew it we were at the last few games of the fourth set, and Baghdatis had a serious chance. He hit almost as many aces as Rodddick, both men hitting comfortably above 220km/hr most of the time. He ran Rodddick (and himself) ragged, and found himself at two match points.
The crowd held its breath as he won the second last point with a confident play, and then against all the odds he played his last shot (opposite), confounding the number 2 by defeating him. The whole arena was on their feet applauding both men: what a match. I couldn’t have picked a better day to go to the Open.
Back in the Champions Lounge we sipped some more champagne before braving the heat outside. It was almost 6pm and still way over 40C. At home I sat quietly mopping my face (our house has a tin roof which means it positively attracts the heat) until Orlando was ready to go out.
We headed down to the sea at Williamstown listening to the emergency broadcast on the radio: Victoria is fighting bush fires east and west, and a few homes and lives have already been lost. We listened to people giving eye-witness accounts of the fire lines approaching their towns, of volunteer fire fighters working at one end of a fire only to hear the wind had driven the fire to their own home at the other end of town.
Every 15 minutes the announcers gave a formal emergency warning accompanied by sirens: a wild fire is burning in the following areas. Evacuate or activate your bush fire plan. Meanwhile my sister Mena was at home (a little further west than us) with all the windows and doors closed against the thick smoke blowing east from the fires.
Meanwhile in town a cool change was descending: a weird vagary of Melbourne weather, where the wind changes and the temperature drops like a stone without warning. We watched as the car thermostat fell 0.1C every few seconds, down from almost 41C when we left the house to less than 36C when we got out of the car at the beach a few minutes later. Even at 8pm hordes of people were crowded on the beach, in the water, playing ball, hanging out in the picnic areas or on huge rugs. We strolled along, stopping to buy icecream: it was still beautfully warm but with a fresher breeze. A moment later the wind got a little stronger, and the sea a little choppier.
We turned back towards the car as parents started wrapping towels around children and packing their coolboxes. The wind gusted stronger and stronger in seconds, blowing sand, boogie boards and beach towels right across the street as we struggled along. My icecream was blown off my cone and down my back in the confusion. Within about three minutes the thronged beach was almost deserted, the cars were filling up and a traffic jam was starting along the beach road. It got noticeably cooler every few seconds.
By the time we reached the car it was 27C and by the time we got home it was stable at 26.5C. It had dropped over 14C in less than 45 minutes.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Friday, December 30, 2005
Roy Webb gets an MBE
Message from His Majesty Roy Webb MBE:
"Thank you all so much for making this special day possible. Clearly I could not have achieved such high recognition without an environment in which to flourish and the huge support of colleagues both within and outside the LAS.
I had loads to say to Her Majesty about my passion for the LAS and the huge disadvantages suffered by people with surnames ending in “W” like Windsor (I was the very last to be awarded) but protocol insists that the meeting is at an end when the Queen offers her hand, which came, in my view, far too early for me but in retrospect just about on cue I guess.
My brother was until recently a senior officer in the London Fire Brigade and our careers have run in parallel. Over those years he dealt with every major incident in London from a plane crash through all the rail disasters and quite properly received recognition from the Queen some 3 years ago. The LAS attended all those incidents but rarely got a mention about our vital role. I found this very irritating.
In consequence therefore, I had the pleasure, last night of speaking (electronically, I am not that brave) to my brother, Robert Webb QFSM and saying “ya boo sucks to you” as one is allowed under protocol to ones elder sibling with a lesser award.
Thanks again guys (a non gender specific term of affection)."
"Thank you all so much for making this special day possible. Clearly I could not have achieved such high recognition without an environment in which to flourish and the huge support of colleagues both within and outside the LAS.
I had loads to say to Her Majesty about my passion for the LAS and the huge disadvantages suffered by people with surnames ending in “W” like Windsor (I was the very last to be awarded) but protocol insists that the meeting is at an end when the Queen offers her hand, which came, in my view, far too early for me but in retrospect just about on cue I guess.
My brother was until recently a senior officer in the London Fire Brigade and our careers have run in parallel. Over those years he dealt with every major incident in London from a plane crash through all the rail disasters and quite properly received recognition from the Queen some 3 years ago. The LAS attended all those incidents but rarely got a mention about our vital role. I found this very irritating.
In consequence therefore, I had the pleasure, last night of speaking (electronically, I am not that brave) to my brother, Robert Webb QFSM and saying “ya boo sucks to you” as one is allowed under protocol to ones elder sibling with a lesser award.
Thanks again guys (a non gender specific term of affection)."
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mairead's Christmas Survival Tips
- Stuck for a present for the man/woman who has everything?
- Cookery Crisis?
- Worried how to get through a crucial Christmas visit without offending anyone?
Christmas Cards
A good way to give to charity easily is to buy charity Christmas cards and gifts. Buy online at:
Cancer Research UK
RSPCA
St. Luke's Hospital, Dublin
Oxfam
Pressies
If you are truly stuck and can't think of anything to get the sister/partner/mate who has everything, try some of these life-saving websites:
cd-wow.com - CDs, DVDs etc. at rock-bottom prices
unbeatable.co.uk - TV, hifi, computers and gadgets
photobox.com - make gifts out of digital photos
asos.com - designer fashion, grooming and more
iwantoneofthose.co.uk - when you REALLY need inspiration!
figleaves.com - beautiful undies
lastminute.com - weekends away, flights, interesting "red letter" days
Deck The Halls
These great websites will find you the perfect table settings, Christmas decorations and everything else you need for the best Christmas parties ever:
bonnefete.co.uk - table settings for special occasions
christmastreeland.co.uk - the best trees delivered to your door
confetti.co.uk - gifts and ideas
deliaonline.com - any culinary crisis fixed!
lakelandlimited.com - the best kitchenware website in the world
kelly-turkeys.com - order a fresh turkey online
teddingtoncheese.co.uk - specialist cheeses for home or gifts
majestic.co.uk - good deals on bulk-buying of wine
Borough Market - London's larder - the very best of British fresh food
NHS Direct - for when it all goes wrong!!!!
Another great number to keep by the phone is the Turkey Hotline - they will help you with all your turkey-roasting problems, right up until 5pm on Christmas Eve. What a great service!!! Call 0800 783 9994.
Entertainment
How come, even when we have all these satellite channels, there is never anything on TV except Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Die Hard 45? Here are some tricks to keep you entertained without leaving the house:
digiguide.com - all your TV listings in the one place
screenselect.co.uk - sign up for their free trial and get your DVDs by post!
Good Manners
There is no excuse for good manners, and Christmas is a great time to dust off your old-fashioned gentility. Why not actually write thank-you notes this Christmas for all your lovely pressies? And don't forget that Christmas is only one of the feasts of the holiday season - some of your friends will be celebrating Hannukah or Kwanzaa.
Learn how to act appropriately at your office Christmas party, or how to be the perfect houseguest.
Check out www.ehow.com - it will teach you all this and more!
Thursday, November 10, 2005
The China Logs: The Rice Terraces of Dazai
Yangshuo, that weird and wonderful backpackers' enclave, was beginning to hang heavy on us after a few days, so we got out. Far to the north of Yangshuo, over 4 hours by bus, are 66 square kilometres of amazing rice terraces in an area populated by the Zhuang and Yao minority groups, who have unique clothes and customs and language.
We were picked up at 7.30am by the tour guide (it was going to take a full day rather than four hours to get there on our own steam so we capitulated and booked a tour). The bus was almost full of westerners - Australians, English and Dutch it seemed - and we were on our way fairly quickly. North past Guilin and into the mountains we went, leaving the weird karst hills of the lowlands behind.
The trip there was slow and arduous as we were driving up into very high mountains and the road was less than ideal in places. For the first three hours or so we were on decent highway but we were still going really slowly due to the steep gradient. Then we turned at a hairpin bend, and the guide told us it would take one and a half hours to travel the final 17km as the road was so tough. She wasn't wrong.
We followed a river valley, the road clinging to the valley walls sometimes hundreds of feet above the almost-dry river bed. Narrow wooden houses on spindly stilts lined the roads on the valley side, shored up sometimes by a few huge struts. On the other side of the road - unhelpfully - huge amounts of timber was piled up, reducing the width of the road in places by a third. But it was still a half-decent road with a tarmac coating.
Then at a river crossing, the tarmac road continued left across the bridge and our bus continued straight along onto what I had thought was a building site. This was the state of the road for the rest of the journey - dirt track would be a generous term. In England we would not attempt this road without a state-of-the-art 4x4 genuine off-road vehicle.
The timber was still piled up and this time there was nothing between us and the river valley but fresh air. No barrier, no struts, no bollards, nothing. Landslides, we had read, were frequent in these parts, and the roadway was cluttered with enormous boulders, some of which had clearly only recently smashed down from above. Above us workers continued to cut timber in the heavy forest. At one point Orlando flinched visibly - later he told me that some workers above us had lost control of an enormous bamboo trunk and it was coming towards us end-first. They rescued it at the very last moment before it snooker-cued us off the road and into the valley below.
The steep hills were beginning to show signs of terracing, although much of the land was covered with dense forest. Around the towns small amounts of land were terraced and as we continued, greater and greater areas in the hills had been cut into to make arable land.
Over an hour along this dirt-track, and many numb rear-ends later, we arrived at a ticket office and a car park in the middle of nowhere. A gaggle of local Yao women were waiting for us to sell their handicrafts. These women looked very different from the Han people who make up more than 92% of the Chinese population. Over 2 million Yao people of various sub-groups live in the southern and south-western provinces of China.
The women were mostly dressed in their traditional clothes of highly-coloured embroidered blue and bright pink and yellow and black fabric: plain (some western) tops were worn under collarless hip-length jackets which wrapped over in front like a kimono, belted at the waist with a long embroidered fabric belt which wrapped twice around the waist before tying at the back. Skirts were knee-length and again embroidered, many narrowly pleated, and most wore a knee-length black apron in the front. Jewellery was ornate silver-plate including heavy hoops in the ears which had elongated many of the women's earlobes (apparently long hair and long lobes equal a long life). Some women wore cloth wrapping around their calves like knee-length socks, black with a white tie at the top. All wore standard army-issue green plimsolls on the feet. But most striking was their heads.
The Yao women are famous for their incredibly long hair, which they wear wrapped in ponytails around their head and covered with a kerchief-like black cap. Most women's hair will get close to reaching the ground when unwrapped. Along with their own hair, young women will also have one or two long tails of hair which belonged to their mother, grandmother or great-grandmother. They add this to their own hair to make the ponytail mane even longer. They wrap it a couple of times around their hair like a crown and tie it in a loop at the front.
We were attacked by these friendly but enthusiastic women even before we had disembarked. They chose their prey as we got off, attaching themselves to us - literally - by linking hands and arms with us and starting the most aggressive sales pitch we have encountered so far in China. However, they were really good-natured (many cheeky!) women who were clearly having a laugh as well as trying to do business. They hawked their jewellery, embroidered bags and aprons and blankets, and the inevitable postcards, as we walked along a stony path towards the village that was to be our overnight stay.
Nestled in the middle of surgically-cut terraced hills was the small picturesque village of Dazai, and its beautiful wooden stilt houses. A wooden school for the children was in the middle with a basketball court in the centre. One or two houses also had small shops. We walked across the central open space and started to climb steep stone steps into the dense houses above.
All the time, these wiry women, young and old, tried to get us to allow them to carry our backpacks for us, in the sturdy wicker baskets they carried on their backs. We kept going doggedly, almost missing the beautiful houses and increasingly amazing views around us as we tried not to lose our step.
Twenty or so perspiring minutes later we were at the uppermost reaches of the village, and stopped finally at the Countryside Cafe, the very highest building in this part of the village. We stopped to admire the spectacular view laid out beneath us and the chiselled terraces stretching as far as the eye could see. These terraces are called the Dragon's Backbone terraces, and it is said that the small hills look like snails and the larger ones like waterfalls. It is autumn here (despite the high temperatures) so no rice was growing and most of the terraces were dry, but the sheer scale of the area is enough to make you stare.
We had lunch surrounded by the seller women and then headed off into the hills guided by a handful of the local women to find one of the best viewpoints. We climbed and climbed up these steep stone steps, thankful that we had left our baggage in our room for the night back at the cafe. In the autumn sunshine we sweated and panted our way up and up, past another village where older women were sitting on their balconies in these big wooden houses weaving fabric on foot-powered old looms.
Up and up still, and the views got more and more panoramic and amazing. Everywhere we looked, hill after hill into the distance, was carved out into razor-sharp terraces. Not an inch of land was wasted. We stopped at a make-shift halting point at which - surprise surprise - women were waiting to sell us their wares along with cold drinks. My camera was hardly switched off at all as I clicked away at every new view.
On and on for about an hour, and we finally came to "viewpoint number 3" where still more women, handicrafts and cold drinks awaited. Some of the women offered to take down their famous long hair for a photo, for 5 or 10 yuan, but I declined - it seemed nothing short of prostitution to me (the picture above I took from Google till I can upload more of my own).
We sat and found our breath and marvelled at the panoramic views all around us before setting off on a different, mercifully downhill, path back to Dazai with yet more lovely views.
Those of us who were staying the night parted company from the others on the valley floor as we returned to the village, and returned to the cafe where were sat sipping Sunkist Orange (all those delicious e-numbers!) and eating supper in the yard overlooking the village and valley below, while the sun slowly set and the lights winked on in each homestead in the hills around us.
We slept soundly in our wooden room on stilts (despite no insulation or floor covering so every whisper and footfall was transmitted throughout the house) and woke again to breakfast outdoors before a gentle wander along another pathway and across a small "wind and rain bridge" (think Bridges of Madison County) to the next village of Tiantou.
It was so peaceful strolling by ourselves along these stone pathways through terraces that were cut into the hills more than 700 years ago. We were hundreds of miles - and years - away from the circus of Yangshuo, and it was one of the highlights of the trip for me. As we walked, local people went about their business, tending the fields or carrying goods up and down from the villages in woven baskets carried on bamboo yokes across their shoulders.
In Tiantou itself one or two small guesthouses had covered sedan chairs outside, the kind which two people would carry up and down the pathways with lazy westerners or prosperous Chinese businessmen in, which they must use in the high season to entice the more weary travellers beyond our village of Dazai and up to their businesses.
A wonderful couple of days, and certainly a trip highlight as I said. Back to the "big smoke" of Guilin and on to Shanghai in a day or so for us, on the final few days of this odyssey.
We were picked up at 7.30am by the tour guide (it was going to take a full day rather than four hours to get there on our own steam so we capitulated and booked a tour). The bus was almost full of westerners - Australians, English and Dutch it seemed - and we were on our way fairly quickly. North past Guilin and into the mountains we went, leaving the weird karst hills of the lowlands behind.
The trip there was slow and arduous as we were driving up into very high mountains and the road was less than ideal in places. For the first three hours or so we were on decent highway but we were still going really slowly due to the steep gradient. Then we turned at a hairpin bend, and the guide told us it would take one and a half hours to travel the final 17km as the road was so tough. She wasn't wrong.
We followed a river valley, the road clinging to the valley walls sometimes hundreds of feet above the almost-dry river bed. Narrow wooden houses on spindly stilts lined the roads on the valley side, shored up sometimes by a few huge struts. On the other side of the road - unhelpfully - huge amounts of timber was piled up, reducing the width of the road in places by a third. But it was still a half-decent road with a tarmac coating.
Then at a river crossing, the tarmac road continued left across the bridge and our bus continued straight along onto what I had thought was a building site. This was the state of the road for the rest of the journey - dirt track would be a generous term. In England we would not attempt this road without a state-of-the-art 4x4 genuine off-road vehicle.
The timber was still piled up and this time there was nothing between us and the river valley but fresh air. No barrier, no struts, no bollards, nothing. Landslides, we had read, were frequent in these parts, and the roadway was cluttered with enormous boulders, some of which had clearly only recently smashed down from above. Above us workers continued to cut timber in the heavy forest. At one point Orlando flinched visibly - later he told me that some workers above us had lost control of an enormous bamboo trunk and it was coming towards us end-first. They rescued it at the very last moment before it snooker-cued us off the road and into the valley below.
The steep hills were beginning to show signs of terracing, although much of the land was covered with dense forest. Around the towns small amounts of land were terraced and as we continued, greater and greater areas in the hills had been cut into to make arable land.
Over an hour along this dirt-track, and many numb rear-ends later, we arrived at a ticket office and a car park in the middle of nowhere. A gaggle of local Yao women were waiting for us to sell their handicrafts. These women looked very different from the Han people who make up more than 92% of the Chinese population. Over 2 million Yao people of various sub-groups live in the southern and south-western provinces of China.
The women were mostly dressed in their traditional clothes of highly-coloured embroidered blue and bright pink and yellow and black fabric: plain (some western) tops were worn under collarless hip-length jackets which wrapped over in front like a kimono, belted at the waist with a long embroidered fabric belt which wrapped twice around the waist before tying at the back. Skirts were knee-length and again embroidered, many narrowly pleated, and most wore a knee-length black apron in the front. Jewellery was ornate silver-plate including heavy hoops in the ears which had elongated many of the women's earlobes (apparently long hair and long lobes equal a long life). Some women wore cloth wrapping around their calves like knee-length socks, black with a white tie at the top. All wore standard army-issue green plimsolls on the feet. But most striking was their heads.
The Yao women are famous for their incredibly long hair, which they wear wrapped in ponytails around their head and covered with a kerchief-like black cap. Most women's hair will get close to reaching the ground when unwrapped. Along with their own hair, young women will also have one or two long tails of hair which belonged to their mother, grandmother or great-grandmother. They add this to their own hair to make the ponytail mane even longer. They wrap it a couple of times around their hair like a crown and tie it in a loop at the front.
We were attacked by these friendly but enthusiastic women even before we had disembarked. They chose their prey as we got off, attaching themselves to us - literally - by linking hands and arms with us and starting the most aggressive sales pitch we have encountered so far in China. However, they were really good-natured (many cheeky!) women who were clearly having a laugh as well as trying to do business. They hawked their jewellery, embroidered bags and aprons and blankets, and the inevitable postcards, as we walked along a stony path towards the village that was to be our overnight stay.
Nestled in the middle of surgically-cut terraced hills was the small picturesque village of Dazai, and its beautiful wooden stilt houses. A wooden school for the children was in the middle with a basketball court in the centre. One or two houses also had small shops. We walked across the central open space and started to climb steep stone steps into the dense houses above.
All the time, these wiry women, young and old, tried to get us to allow them to carry our backpacks for us, in the sturdy wicker baskets they carried on their backs. We kept going doggedly, almost missing the beautiful houses and increasingly amazing views around us as we tried not to lose our step.
Twenty or so perspiring minutes later we were at the uppermost reaches of the village, and stopped finally at the Countryside Cafe, the very highest building in this part of the village. We stopped to admire the spectacular view laid out beneath us and the chiselled terraces stretching as far as the eye could see. These terraces are called the Dragon's Backbone terraces, and it is said that the small hills look like snails and the larger ones like waterfalls. It is autumn here (despite the high temperatures) so no rice was growing and most of the terraces were dry, but the sheer scale of the area is enough to make you stare.
We had lunch surrounded by the seller women and then headed off into the hills guided by a handful of the local women to find one of the best viewpoints. We climbed and climbed up these steep stone steps, thankful that we had left our baggage in our room for the night back at the cafe. In the autumn sunshine we sweated and panted our way up and up, past another village where older women were sitting on their balconies in these big wooden houses weaving fabric on foot-powered old looms.
Up and up still, and the views got more and more panoramic and amazing. Everywhere we looked, hill after hill into the distance, was carved out into razor-sharp terraces. Not an inch of land was wasted. We stopped at a make-shift halting point at which - surprise surprise - women were waiting to sell us their wares along with cold drinks. My camera was hardly switched off at all as I clicked away at every new view.
On and on for about an hour, and we finally came to "viewpoint number 3" where still more women, handicrafts and cold drinks awaited. Some of the women offered to take down their famous long hair for a photo, for 5 or 10 yuan, but I declined - it seemed nothing short of prostitution to me (the picture above I took from Google till I can upload more of my own).
We sat and found our breath and marvelled at the panoramic views all around us before setting off on a different, mercifully downhill, path back to Dazai with yet more lovely views.
Those of us who were staying the night parted company from the others on the valley floor as we returned to the village, and returned to the cafe where were sat sipping Sunkist Orange (all those delicious e-numbers!) and eating supper in the yard overlooking the village and valley below, while the sun slowly set and the lights winked on in each homestead in the hills around us.
We slept soundly in our wooden room on stilts (despite no insulation or floor covering so every whisper and footfall was transmitted throughout the house) and woke again to breakfast outdoors before a gentle wander along another pathway and across a small "wind and rain bridge" (think Bridges of Madison County) to the next village of Tiantou.
It was so peaceful strolling by ourselves along these stone pathways through terraces that were cut into the hills more than 700 years ago. We were hundreds of miles - and years - away from the circus of Yangshuo, and it was one of the highlights of the trip for me. As we walked, local people went about their business, tending the fields or carrying goods up and down from the villages in woven baskets carried on bamboo yokes across their shoulders.
In Tiantou itself one or two small guesthouses had covered sedan chairs outside, the kind which two people would carry up and down the pathways with lazy westerners or prosperous Chinese businessmen in, which they must use in the high season to entice the more weary travellers beyond our village of Dazai and up to their businesses.
A wonderful couple of days, and certainly a trip highlight as I said. Back to the "big smoke" of Guilin and on to Shanghai in a day or so for us, on the final few days of this odyssey.
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