Here is the Great Southern Land its Easter Saturday which means football, meatpies, kangaroos and holden cars. To translate for the more civilised half of the globe - Easter Saturday is possibly the laziest day on the Australian holiday calendar.
Millions of my countrymen and women are bronzing their leathery hides on the gigantic beach which surrounds our gigantic island. This country does 'beach' the way other people do 'office'. Lord knows, most of the major beaches along the east coast are Wi-Fi enabled so you can take your laptop onto the sand for the afternoon. Lifeguards do a roaring trade recovering mobile phones and notebooks from the sandhills.
The best way to think about Australia is as an onion with a gigantic inner core - we leave that bit to mining companies, the afore-mentioned kangaroos and other freakishly shaped wildlife - surrounded by a little thin layer of green (which we fill with sheep, wheat and all that useful stuff) - and then another thin, thin, thin layer which has all the roads and factories and buildings - and then THE BEACH.
85% of us live within a short drive to the shore. We huddle around the harbours, settle by the strands, rent by the river mouths....you get the idea. Getting sand in your knickers is an occupational hazard everywhere here. Basically, you'll find most people in pubs or coffee shops facing the beach, on beachtowels, actually on the beach, or boogie-boarding, sail-boarding or body surfing in the breakers, or sitting on a jetty, a pier or a fishing boat, just off the beach.
Woe betide those who'd rather read, or occupy themselves in more intellectual pursuits. Australians aren't exactly anti-intellectual, but you'd better be able to play that oboe under a beach umbrella. And there's been HEAPS of Great Australian Novels composed by intellectuals who are sitting on a canvas chair, wearing a towelling hat and spf 30 sunscreeen, and pretending to be enjoying themselves.
My family of rockn'roll misfits is (of course) indulging in serious non-conformity by spending the day indoors, deaf to the suggestions that we're being un-Australian and possibly even terrorists.
The Boss of Bass is watching his football team, and restringing the 12-string rickenbacker. I'm sitting in the dark airconditioned library blogging and pretending that there's no such thing as weather. Meanwhile the TGG is banging and crashing and swearing in the kitchen, doing the dishes which built up over Easter Thursday and Friday.
Poor little thing. Domestic duties go completely against her image as punk rock chick. She's got the CD player in there, playing the new Killers Album at volumes which made the neighbours dog howl. She's been having a less-than-successful social life just now. The tall American ditched her for a birthday party. The shorter American is with his girlfriend. The tall English lout is working, his pussy-whipped best friend is sulking about how hard it is to get a parking spot at the local super-mall and the rest of the crowd are just no-account losers, or girls. Its SO hard to be a groove-goddess when everyone else is worshipping other Gods on this holy holiday. (TGG isn't keen on sharing her limelight with ANYONE.)
Wow. Cool. The other great thing about Australia is how quickly the weather changes down in the tropical Coral Sea. A really spiffy storm is suddenly brewing and the thunder and lightning are much more our style... maybe TGG can put a couple of jumper-cables on a boyfriend.
