The Angry Exile: Things I still don't get about Australia

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday 5 September 2009

Things I still don't get about Australia - No. 9

When you get a till receipt at the supermarkets they fold the fucking thing up and pass it over to you with the change on top, coins on notes. Why? Do they get points for artistic impression or something? It drives Mrs Exile nuts because she then needs both hands to sort it out. Change, allow time to tip coins into purse and sort notes out, then receipt, and she'd be so much less inclined to drive celery into the eyes of the person at the till. I don't feel quite so strongly about it and tend to just ram receipt, notes and coins into a pocket where it can all scratch the screen of my phone to fuckery, but I can see where she's coming from.

UPDATE: After comments from the Thylacosmilus and Dick Puddlecote I see it's not a particularly Australian thing after all. Doesn't help me get any closer to working out why the do it though.

8 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...: Yep, I'm with your missus here, AE, it irritates me too.; 6 September 2009 at 01:31
Angry Exile said...: Seems the title should have been "Things I still don't get about shopping - No. 1".; 7 September 2009 at 15:00
CountingCats said...: A few years ago at a Safeway in Streatham, there was ons single checkout girl who used to count the change out, properly. Whenever I went there I would head for her checkout in preference to any others.

When I own Tesco I will force every checkout person to count the change.; 7 September 2009 at 17:15
Angry Exile said...: Apparently Mrs Exile saw someone on the TV having a go at the supermarkets and decided to join in.; 8 September 2009 at 21:22
JuliaM said...: Let's hope this doesn't become 'an Australian thing', or you might be a shoo-in for 'Continent's Highest Level of Darwin Award Winners'... :); 9 September 2009 at 03:24
Shibby said...: I hate being handed the receipt and the cash at the same time. Lots of places in Scotland do that, and some don't.

Maybe it's just a subtle way of telling you to move along - I often feel rushed in shops that do this - but it's a real pain to walk away from the till struggling with bags, trying to separate coins from notes from receipts.; 9 September 2009 at 07:25
Angry Exile said...: Julia, I've been meaning to blog on those two Adelaide girls who booked their faces instead of calling the emergency services. It should go with the Queensland girl who wanted to pop her cherry because she thought the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the world [looks... nope, still here] and the other girl who stuck her arm down a drain to help an echidna. Now, since an echidna is basically like a small badger made out of nails handling one doesn't strike me as a good idea. Handling one that's probably shit scared at being in a drain? No, ta. People get paid to do that sort of thing and I'd be happy to call one of 'em.

Insert any appropriate or inappropriate remark about Sheilas here ;-); 9 September 2009 at 23:44
JuliaM said...: It's a reflief to see that the moron distribution is pretty much even, despite the geographical location...

"...basically like a small badger made out of nails..."

That's a pretty good summation of an echidna! I remember when I first saw one in the flesh, I was surprised at how big they were. I'd been expecting a rat/hedgehog sized beast...; 10 September 2009 at 14:36