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

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 30 January 2010

Things I still don't get about Australia - No. 18

TV. It's often shit. And worse still it's often shit in a way that's depressingly familiar because, I'm slightly embarrassed to say, it's British shit. Now that's fair enough because Australia produces some spectacular shit of it's own - name an Aussie soap and I probably hated it - which have been bought up by UK channels, so I do understand if an Aussie TV channel bought British soaps. And I can just about understand why SBS bought Top Gear as 'infotainment' (and why Nine nicked it) even though every time they mention speed, weight, power etc. since it's not in metric it'll often be unfamiliar to many Aussies much under 40. And giving prices in Sterling really is pretty irrelevant here, doubly so if it's a car that isn't available in Oz in the first place. But if that seems weird it's nothing on some of the other stuff. I thought seeing Antiques Roadshow was odd when I first got here, though I suppose that could be Top Gear for the Baby Boomer generation, but who the hell here is supposed to get anything from seeing Catherine Gee traipsing around rural Britain house hunting for cashed up townies? Escape to the Country ticks all the fail boxes - unfamiliar geography, irrelevant currency and, since Catherine Gee apparently doesn't do the show anymore, it's a few years out of date and the prices will be even more meaningless. They do it with Grand Designs and that one with Amanda Lamb as well. Why? Are the British channels selling them so much cheaper than it costs to make some Australian content to fill the schedules? It's surely not padding out the schedules because Escape to the Country is on at half nine on Friday nights. So why do it?

On the off chance any British TV execs come across this I'd like to pitch an idea for a new show. We find some charismatic, camera friendly Aussie girl and send her to look at properties for Aussie families and couples who want to trade up. We stick to dollars and never mention how much it is in pounds. We discuss floor areas in squares* in order to make British viewers ask 'square whats' and we try to send her only to towns and suburbs that difficult to spell and preferably have a misleading pronunciation so that it's tricky to look them up in Google Earth and preserves the mystery of where, in a very large country almost as far away from the viewers as it's possible to be, they actually are. We can call it 'No, Me Neither, But Dale Winton's On The Other Side.'