Robert Drewe says he’s a dog lover, but there’s limits.  And they’re being stretched…

In my day I’ve owned intelligent, obedient, affectionate and adventurous dogs. I’ve also known lolloping, disobedient, crazy dogs that were as dumb as a bag of hammers. Once I even wrote a book about a beloved dog. So before your hackles rise, let me say that I’m a dog lover.

Nevertheless, we’re stretching a friendship these days, we humans and dogs. Have there ever been so many dogs in public places and underfoot – their leashes entwined around café table and chair legs — in spots meant for human activities? Even for food consumption?

On that point, when did “walking the dog” change from one or two kilometres of exercise at the park or beach to 50 metres through a crowd of shoppers on the footpath on Saturday morning — from the car to the cafe?

Another question. Why the fascination with weirdly-designed genetic experiments that are cutesy variations on the poodle? To look at, some of these doodle dogs remind me of the alien bar scene in Star Wars. And don’t get me started on women with fashion-accessory dogs (doglets, really). How degrading for the wolf’s first cousin to be carried in a handbag!

But creepiest question of all: Why do so many people want a fur baby anyway?

Designer dogs are comparatively recent. In my childhood, back when dogs were animals, the only exotic ones were Old English Sheepdogs, Afghans and Dalmatians. Fox Terriers, usually fat and threadbare, belonged to old codgers in pubs. Old ladies had Silky Terriers and an occasional Pekinese or Corgi. German Shepherds (we called them Alsatians) were feared for their alleged savagery. Cattle dogs were mistrusted because they ran from behind to nip you as you walked to school. (Those were the days of walking to school, too. How yesteryear can you get?)

Family dogs always had a dash of Kelpie and assorted bits and pieces. They were allowed on the street without a leash. You’d see them on TV displaying their lovable personalities by running onto the pitch and disrupting a Test match or football game or Royal visit. They enjoyed a solemn ceremony and were hard to catch. For some reason they were always black dogs.

Black dogs were the only ones to disrupt important events, but we kids had another scientific rule that applied to all dogs’ behaviour: Pointy ears, bites. Floppy ears, stupid.

Faithful companions, family dogs followed you on your bike, and waited outside the school till home time. They roamed the suburbs with doggy friends and chased cars if they felt like a run, and defecated at will. (Doggy-poo bags? Are you kidding?) Until 2012, however, dogs weren’t allowed into shops or cafes, which displayed signs forbidding them.

Somewhere along the line, perhaps when local councils tightened up rules about stray and unfenced dogs, the average suburban dog ceased to be just another outdoor knockabout kid and turned into a feminised indoor doll-animal. (This caused macho chaps of the biker persuasion to react by breeding dogs they thought captured the essence of their complex personalities. Hence the pit bull.)

If there was any doubt about how much Australians love pets, consider this statistic: more of us live with a dog or cat than with a child; 50 per cent of Australians share a house with at least one dog and/or cat (of those pets, 38 per cent are dogs and 23 per cent cats.) Whereas only 35 per cent of us live with one child or more aged under 16, most of them eventually house-trained.

Australians spend $12 billion a year on pet food, grooming, vet fees and insurance for their animals, making the pet care industry a major growth area.

Interestingly, the fascination with poodle mixes doesn’t extent to pure poodles. Presumably, if the poodle mix is chosen because poodles are intelligent and don’t shed hair, a pure-bred poodle should have it all over the Labradoodle or whatever for smartness and hair retention. But, no, everyone wants one of the 150 doodle dog variations (at $2000 a pup) on the market.

Who can resist a Daisy Dog? Robert Drewe apparently…

So we now have such appallingly named dogs as the Jack-a-Poo (Jack Russell and poodle); Schnoodle (schnauzer and poodle); Pooghan (Afghan and poodle); Cocker-Poo (Cocker spaniel and poodle); Bossy-Poo (Boston terrier and poodle); Irish Doodle (Irish setter and poodle); Golden Doodle; (Golden Retriever and poodle), Rottle (Rottweiler and poodle); Poogle (Beagle and poodle); and, my least favourite, the Daisy Dog (Bichon Frise, ShihTzu and poodle).

So what to do if your naughty Bossy-Poo or Cocker-Poo or Jack-a-Poo or Pooghan poos on the carpet? I don’t think the old tap with a rolled-up newspaper would work as punishment. I suggest a delicately furled Vogue or Gourmet Traveller magazine.

For more information on Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird, and his other books go here: penguin.com.au/authors/robert-drewe

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The other day I heard a hospital administrator on the radio talking knowledgeably about hard-working health professionals who were “speechies”, “occies” and “respos”. These jobs were new to me. It turned out she was referring to speech, occupational and respiratory therapists.

So the Australian partiality for baby talk has now entered the fields of physical and mental health. Mind you, the national love of diminutives was already present in medical circles. For example, we’d always called physiotherapists “physios” and gynaecologists “gynos”. But I hadn’t realised how widely the habit was spreading.

We’ve long used diminutives for such jobs as ambulance driver (ambo), book maker (bookie), bricklayer (brickie), carpenter (chippie), farmer (cocky), garbage collector (garbo), journalist (journo), milkman (milko), musician (muso), politician (pollie), postman (postie), sub-contractor (subbie), tradesman (tradie), truck driver (truckie), wharf labourer (wharfie), and prostitute (prozzie),

Injured at work? Even at “smoko”. Better apply for “compo” (compensation). Or you won’t be able to afford your “reggo” (car registration). Careful you don’t become a “dero” (homeless person).

Interestingly, while everyone knows “chalkie” is the nickname for teacher, it has never really caught on in Australia. For some reason teachers remain teachers. (Until computerisation, “chalkie” also applied to the stock exchange employees who wrote stock prices on chalk boards.)

Until a decade ago I’d never heard “boilie” (for boiler-maker) and “firey” (for fire fighter). Or, until more recently, “cranie” (crane driver); “crownie” (not just Crown lager, but crown prosecutor); “shoppie” (retail shop assistant); and “towie” (tow-truck driver).

Or, for that matter, “Cento”, for the Centrelink office, responsible for unemployment pensions; “povvo”, a poor person; and “deso”, a designated (and abstaining) driver of drinkers.

For reasons known only to Australians, a biker and a surfer anywhere else are a “bikie” and “surfie” here (but never in actual biker or surfer circles).

In Melbourne, you’d know Broady was Broadmeadows, and in Sydney that Parra was Parramatta. In Perth you’d be au fait with Cott, Subi, Freo and Rotto. If you follow AFL or the two rugby codes, you’re a “footy” fan. The other code, known here and in the US as soccer, however, insists on “football”.

Why do we indulge in such baby language (talking about bickies and choccies – and choccy bickies!) long after our third birthday? Why do we eat at Macca’s and buy fuel at the servo? And give prezzies at Chrissie, and drink cuppas and tinnies and coldies, and cook snaggers at barbies (unless we’re veggos and prefer avos), and support the Salvos and Vinnies, and wear trackies or boardies in the arvo?

Because we want to be liked. As pathetic as that sounds, Dr Nenagh Kemp, a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Tasmania, says “Australians have an intuitive feeling that these words make social interaction more informal, more friendly and relaxed.”

Dr Kemp’s work on spoken Australian English is helping to build up a more complete picture of what it means to be Australian today, and how choosing to use certain Australian words such as “arvo” and “footy” signals national identity. As she told the Australian Geographic Society which sponsored some of her research, “It sounds obvious: we make words shorter to save us a bit of time and effort. But some diminutives actually make words longer, like Tommo for Tom. And we don’t really save a lot of time by saying barbie instead of barbecue.”

With more than 4300 recorded in our lexicon, Australians use more abbreviated words than any other English speakers. Word lists collected in the past few years show that older Australians are more likely to think of slang with “o” endings (muso, smoko). Young people use these less frequently. Modern trends are to affix an ‘s’ to the first syllable (think “awks” for awkward — which it is).

“If you’re someone who speaks to groups – say, a politician – it could be interesting to know whether these kinds of words make you seem friendlier, or perhaps more condescending,” said Dr Kemp. (Too late, Kevin Rudd.)

“Some people accuse younger generations of spoiling our language with all these diminutives. But the earliest examples are from the 1800s. It’s a long tradition, not a modern laziness.”

Despite that, she can’t see herself adopting some current language trends. “I’m kind of bemused by the trend of saying “mobes” for mobiles, or “totes” for totally. I use some shortened words, but those just sound silly to me.”

For myself, I draw the line at the current words “lappy” for laptop, “Facey” for Facebook, “petty” for petrol, and “devo” for devastated. Anyway, in my teenage daughter’s case, “devo” actually translates as “mildly upset”.

“Deffo”, as she says. “Definitely.”

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Three times this week my household has been woken at two a.m. by phone calls from Burundi. We’ve never been to Burundi. Nor do we know anyone from Burundi. To be honest — and I hope Burundians don’t take this the wrong way — I’m determined never to step foot there.

It’s not just being woken up three times at two a.m. by Burundian callers, who then swiftly hang up, that has influenced my decision not to visit Burundi. The Department of Foreign Affairs doesn’t want me — or any other Australians — to go to Burundi. They not only strongly warn against it, they say that if I’m in Burundi already to get the hell out.

Why? My Burundi knowledge was sketchy, limited to grim news reports of 300,00 Tutsis and Hutus slaughtering each other there and in neighbouring Rwanda in the 90s. So eventually I did what anyone does when Burundi phones them three times a week in the middle of the night: I Googled Burundi.

The news wasn’t favourable. The former German and then Belgian colony is a landlocked country in Central Africa, one of the world’s poorest and most violent nations, struggling to emerge from 50-years of ethnic-based civil war, ongoing conflict with Rwanda, assassinations and genocide.

It’s also beset by widespread disease (yellow fever, malaria, HIV/Aids, cholera, filariasis, plague, sleeping sickness, meningococcal, TB and — for anyone attempting to swim in Lake Tanganyika — schistosomiasis). Also malnutrition, banditry, Al Shabaab terrorists, armed rebels, carjackings, kidnappings, drought, floods, landslides, landmines, road blocks, over-population and almost complete de-forestation. Think of something really bad, anything at all, and Burundi’s got it.

Anything pleasant to offset this dire state of affairs? Well, without the unspeakably brave ministrations of Doctors Without Borders, and foreign aid, which provides nearly half the nation’s income, average life expectancy would doubtless be lower than the present 50 for both sexes.

Unlucky Last – in black (or red as the case maybe) and white.

On a United Nations index called the World Happiness Report, which considers such variables as real GDP per capita, social support, health, life expectancy, personal freedom, and perceptions of corruption, Burundi comes equal last (154^th) – the equal unhappiest country on earth — with its neighbour, the Central African Republic.

Even beleaguered, war-torn Iraq (117^th), Afghanistan (141^st) and Syria (152^nd) are happier places than Burundi. (By way of contrast, Norway comes first in happiness and, counting one’s blessings, Australia is ninth. America is 14^th and Britain 19^th.)

The Burundi media is heavily censored and any criticism is regarded as treason. You can’t go for a jog in Bujumbura, the capital, unless you register with the government and join a jogging club. Then you must jog in one of nine approved venues. The police may have some questions about your jogging: “How many people will be jogging with you? At what time? Give us their names.”

In their dire circumstances, perhaps you can’t blame the Burundians for talking a leaf out of Nigeria’s infamous book and joining the scamming industry. Because that’s what their dead-of-night international phone calls are about.

The scam, originating in Japan, is called Wangiri, meaning “one ring and cut”. Mostly you receive a call deliberately in the middle of the night when the recipient is disoriented: the phone gives a single ring or two before the caller disconnects.

The scammer will have hired an international premium rate number (IPRN) from a local phone company. The trick is to get you to call back on the same premium-rate number. You’re probably thinking you missed an important call (from overseas — it must be important!). When you call back the unfamiliar foreign number (Burundi’s prefix is +257) your call is taken but the person on the line doesn’t talk to you.

You’re sitting there in your pyjamas, blinking at your mobile, saying, “Hello, hello, hello, is anybody there?“ Eventually, receiving no answer, you get frustrated and hang up. By then you’ve lost quite a bit of money. You’ve been charged higher than regular calling rates, and the revenue earned is then shared between the telecom operator and the owner of the number from Burundi. Or maybe from Malawi (+265), Nigeria (+234), Tunisia (+216), Russia (+7), Belarus (+375) or Pakistan (+92).

According to Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), 155,035 Australians were scammed — by all methods — of $83,563,599 last year.

The biggest losers, mostly males, lost $32,278,469 to jobs and investment scams. The second biggest losers lost $25,480,351 to dating and romance scammers. The victims were mainly (presumably lonely) 55 to 64-year-old women.

Maybe we’re finally waking up to the dreaded Nigerian scammers. They only made $1,404,108 out of gullible Australians in 2016. No figures were available on the Burundians. But we didn’t call them back.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird is out now: penguin.com.au.whipbird

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Don’t you love complex scientific research that spends time and money to come up with results that everyone knows already? Like the recent buttered toast study, where several scientific investigations found that grandma was right: toast dropped from a table falls butter-or-jam-side down at least 62 per cent of the time.

Then there was my favourite research study of 2016: the finding by St Andrew’s and Glasgow universities that the opposite sex becomes more than 25 per cent more attractive to people drinking alcohol.

A corresponding study at Bristol University went even further, discovering that students of both sexes found people 10 per cent sexier after just a measly 15 minutes of drinking and two beers. (Also proving that British universities have no trouble signing up willing students as research subjects.)Now, on a different tack, a major study involving hundreds of participants and researchers in France, Israel and the US, and just published by the American Psychological Association, has discovered that people often look like their names; specifically that men named Bob mostly look like men named Bob, and that Tims actually look like chaps called Tim.

The next possible research study?

Putting aside the question of why an international Bob and Tim research study should be conducted in the first place, the investigation found that participants shown a photograph and given a list of five names, matched photographs of the Tims and Bobs to their names with 40 per cent accuracy. Furthermore, a computer using a learning algorithm matched 94,000 facial images to their correct names 64 per cent of the time.According to the chief researcher, Dr Yonat Zwebner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this was because of the cultural stereotypes we attach to names. People subconsciously altered their appearance to conform to the cultural norms and cues associated with their names: “Those areas of the face controlled by the individual, such as hairstyle,were sufficient to produce the effect,” said Dr Zwebner.

Dr Yonat Zwebnar from the University of Jerusalem.

Dr Ruth Mayo, co-author of the Bob and Tim study, says we’re subject to social structuring from the minute we’re born, not only by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status but by the simple choice our parents made in giving us our name. “These findings suggest that facial appearance represents social expectations of how a person with a particular name should look. A social tag may influence one’s facial appearance and our facial features may change over the years to eventually represent the expectations of how we should look.”

And why were people able to differentiate a Bob from a Tim? Because, the study found, Bob was “a round-sounding name” so Bobs were thought to have round faces, while Tim “sounded thin”, with a narrow face. ‘

Hmm. Speaking as a Robert or Rob (not a Bob, thanks), it seems to me the study missed an important point. The parents who apparently laid down these rules when naming their boy babies, would actually have called them Robert and Timothy, not Bob and Tim, maybe with quite different cultural and social expectations.According to the Behind the Name website published simultaneously in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the “popularity ratings” given by hundreds of respondents to Bob and Robert, and Tim and Timothy, vary considerably.

Robert scores magnificently for Masculine, Strong, Classic, Mature, Wholesome, Refined, Serious and (oh, oh) Nerdy. Bob, alas, while also getting a Masculine, Strong and Wholesome rating, features mainly in the Informal, Common, Rough, Boring, Comedic, Simple and Unintellectual departments.

Of course this is unfair and very, very wrong. Especially the fat-faced, Boring, levitra and alcohol Common, Simple, Rough and Unintellectual slurs. Amongst many other fabulous exemplars of the name, let me hasten to present Bob Dylan, Bob Hawke, Bob Marley, Bob Hope, Bob Carr, Bob Ellis and Bob Woodward.

Similarly, although Tim scores well in the Youthful, Masculine, Strong, Informal, Wholesome, Comedic and (oh, oh) Nerdy polls, Timothy’s ratings in the Mature, Classic, Refined and Intellectual departments beat Tim’s and Robert’s names (and, of course, poor Bob’s) hands down.

All of which should be taken with a pinch of salt when you consider that perhaps Australia’s two favourite sons, intellectual and otherwise, are the Tims Minchin and Winton.

Incidentally, the Behind the Name site has some interesting respondents’ ratings for the name Donald. Published two years before the US election, the areas in which Donald dominated are Bad Name, Feminine, Modern, Informal, Common, Urban, Devious, Rough, Simple, Comedic, Unintellectual and Strange.

(Sincere apologies to the Dons Bradman, Corleone, Quixote, Draper, Pleasence, Chipp, Sutherland, O’Connor and Duck.)

Robert Drewe’s  long-awaited new novel WHIPBIRD will be published by Penguin/Viking on July 31: penguin.com.au/books/whipbird-9780670070619

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Jim, a crusty old sports announcer of my acquaintance, was celebrating his retirement at the pub. “I’m glad to be out of it,” he said. “Tennis nearly did me in. I’d break into a sweat when the Wimbledon or Open results came to hand.”

Samantha Stosur and Lleyton Hewitt were the last Australian players whose names he felt comfortable saying on air. “Then suddenly Thanasi Kokkinakis and Ajla Tomljanovic and Daria Gavrilova were winning matches. As for the internationals, I managed Sharapova OK, but the women began to be called Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Agnieszka Radwanska and Garbine Muguruza.”

The men were no easier. “I always struggled with Vasek Pospisil. It sounds even worse if you break it down into syllables and say it slowly. Just quietly, I always hoped he’d be out in the first round.”

He grappled with Phillip Kohlschreiber, Alexandr Dolgopolov and Mikhail Youzhny. “As for Nick Kyrgios, with him being Australian and always in the news, I had to manage it, but it wasn’t easy.”

Strangely, Jim could pronounce those names now, even after a few beers. But it was a different matter on air. “It’s a whole new world,” he said, since the beginning of his broadcasting career in the days of the pronounceable champions, Laver, Emerson, Newcombe, Hoad and Rosewall.  The same with the women. Margaret Smith became Margaret Court, so no worries there. And Yvonne Goolagong had a comfortable beat to it.”

Above: Not the best possible name for a sportsman?

Peter, an old newspaper sportswriter, interrupted him. “What are you whingeing about? At least you didn’t have to write their bloody names down correctly. Sport now takes twice as long to write. Especially football stories,” he complained.

“Take the two rugbys. Most of the league and union players are Pacific Islanders. You know what that means – apostrophes everywhere: Manu Ma’u, Kirisome Auva’a, Sione and Pat Mata’uta, Ben Te’o and Angus Ta’avao. And you try spelling Apisai Koroisau or Sio Siua Taulkeiaho or Dallin Watene-Zelezniak right first time! Typing out the their playing lists each week is a full day’s work.”

“At least you didn’t have to say Dallin Whatsisname,” grumbled Jim. “Bring back the old Anglo names.”

“You must be joking!” said Peter. “They’re even more confusing because they catch you napping. Take the AFL. It’s chocka with Anglo names but now they’re spelled funny. There are even 17 current players with the same first name but varying spellings!”

He listed them. There was one Jaryd and one Jarred, two Jarrods, three Jarryds, three Jareds, five Jarrads, and their cousins Sharrod and Jarryn. “I don’t care if a boy called Jarrod kicks ten goals and has 50 touches, he doesn’t get my vote,” Peter snorted.

He mourned the days when you could field an Aussie Rules team called Ray, Ron, Doug, Bob, Alan, Geoff, Clive, Dennis, Neil, Keith, Colin, Roy, Steve, Ted, , Peter, Bill and two Johns. “No spelling problems there.”

He moaned on. Why were the parents of the current crop so in love with the letter Y that they insisted on turning it into the sixth vowel? “So now we’ve got Ayce, Blayne, Arryn, Claye, Ayden, Cadeyn, Danyle, Dayne, Jarryn, Jayden, Tayte, Kamdyn and Kyal.”

Their grizzles recalled the entertaining AFL name-analysis column begun in The Monthly magazine several years ago by Peter Cronin. Along the lines of Cronin’s column, these recent players could fill the following categories:

Names suitable for a faded aristocrat or equerry: Will Hoskin-Elliott, George Horlin-Smith, Henry Slattery, Toby Nankervis, James Polkinghorne, Lewis Roberts-Thomson, Piers Flanagan, Jasper Pittard, Thomas Bellchambers, Angus Monfries.

Names suitable for bushrangers and plucky English heroes: Jack Darling, Jack Watts, Jack Grimes, Jack Redden, Jack Crisp, Jack Frost, Jack Redpath. Also Tom Rockcliff — and Patrick Dangerfield, of course.

 Names suitable for rascally Dickensian criminals: Sam Grimley, Sam Siggins, Sam Darley, Sam Rowe, Sam Docherty, Sam Kerridge.

Names that leave one feeling curiously unsettled:

Tyson Goldsack, Dayne Zorko, Jordan De Goey, Kirk Ugle, Steele Sidebottom, Blaine Boekhorst, Joshua Prudden, Travis Boak, Tomas Bugg, Llane Spaanderman, Alipate Carlile, Kristian Jaksch.

 Names suitable for an outer-suburban outdoor wedding venue: Beau Waters, Oliver Wines.

Surnames suitable for a cocktail incorporating Campari or Amaretto: Cassisi, Firrito, Morabito, Deledio, Bontempelli, Menegola, Fantasia.

Surnames suitable for middle-European smoked meats: Schoenmakers, Schroder, Leuenberger, Petrenko, Malceski, Karnezis.

Names suitable for the location of an English murder mystery: Campbell Heath, Harrison Marsh, Easton Wood, Bradley Hill, Dean Towers.

As his retirement party wore on, Jim the ex-broadcaster revealed his biggest fear – spoonerisms. “Once you worry about them, you can’t help saying them. Nat Fyfe always bothered me. And Jed Bews, Dane Rampe and Matt Shaw. I was really pleased when Karmichael Hunt gave the game away.”

Robert Drewe’s latest book, The Beach, an Australian Passion, is published by the National Library of Australia and is available here: the-beach-an-australian-passion His other recent books The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon are on sale here: penguin.com.au

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Today I did what I thought was a fairly insignificant thing and bought myself a plastic cutlery set from Woolworths. As I swiped my purchase at the self-serve checkout a very official notification advised me to stay put while I waited for assistance.

You see, it turns out that the set contained a type of knife – a butter knife – and buying a knife makes me a potentially violent criminal. If I were a violent criminal intending to use my butter knife for ill purposes, that would be Woolworth’s fault for allowing me to acquire a dangerous weapon masquerading as picnic ware and they could be sued for my crimes.

Thankfully, the teenager in charge of assessing my psychological state against the likelihood that I would commit plastic-butter-knife-homicide decided I was a safe bet and let me leave with my new cutlery. I now feel safer in the knowledge that fully trained Woolworths staff are here to protect us at self-serve checkouts across the country – we live in dangerous times you know.

Things really are getting bad out there. Just the other week a primary school in Geelong had to ban the children from hugging one another in a bid to protect them.

The headmaster said that nothing in particular had prompted the decision but: “In this current day and age we are really conscious about protecting kids and teaching them from a young age that you have to be cautious.”

Kids taking part in ‘hugging’ now deemed to be a highly dangerous activity.

Apparently this day and age is so crazy dangerous that excess hugging has now become a gateway activity to criminal behaviour…or something. I always thought hugging was fairly safe but I must have been mixing up my days and ages because I don’t think a trained principal would just make up arbitrary rules based on nonsense. I don’t doubt that he has based his decision on solid research that indicates a causal link between excess hugging as a child and becoming some kind of terrifying cuddling menace in later years. I’m sure lots of Australians are hugged to death every year and this principal is just doing his bit to stop the madness.

And it’s not just the children who need protecting from the terrible dangers of the world either. Some friends of mine recently returned from a holiday in New Zealand and were telling me all about the treacherous activities they had taken part in. Evidently they have bushwalks over there that go near cliffs and the edges aren’t even signed.

As you can imagine I was horrified. What are they thinking? Don’t they know people will just walk off cliffs unless they’re instructed not to in writing? I always knew those Kiwis were backwards.

Thankfully in Australia we look after our citizens and protect them from injury. Last night I was at the cinema and noticed a sign that read ‘For the safety of yourself and others you are under constant video surveillance’. Well, thank goodness for that!

I was so relieved but also, as I started to think back, my whole life sort of flashed before my eyes. I’ve been to countless movies and, until recently, no one filmed me doing it! I remember sitting in the Star-Court cinema as a child, eating ice cream in the dark, completely oblivious to the fact that my safety was being compromised by inadequate video surveillance.

It’s this current diligence to public safety that provides us with helpful information on potentially hazardous products too. Like this tube of cold sore cream I just found in my bathroom cupboard for instance: ‘Do not use in eyes,’ it helpfully advises in bold text (no I’m not making this up).

I can only assume this is to:

a) be informative about where not to put cold sore cream, and

b) protect the company who makes it from financial liability in case anyone puts the cold sore cream in their eyes on purpose because no-one told them it wasn’t a good idea.

Is there a precedent for this? Who are these people smearing medicated ointments in their eyes thereby making it necessary to warn other potential eye smearers of the dangers of this activity? I’m developing some concerns for our collective IQ

Are we really being protected or just sanitised into a nation of dullards? I genuinely think we need to turn this trend around and start actively encouraging more risks – because risks come right before all the good stuff in life. Our kids need us to show them how to tell the difference between discomfort, calculated risk and “Oh my god don’t even think about it kid!” risks.

I know that a little bit of protection will always be necessary. I think we can all get behind Woolworth’s policy of not selling butter knives to dangerous people at their self-serve checkouts without a thorough psychological analysis from the staff.

And if New Zealanders could just, I don’t know, kindly refrain from throwing any Aussies over their cliffs for whining about their bushwalks, that would be really great. But ultimately I reckon a bit more getting our hands dirty, some surveillance free movies and a whole heap more hugging might be kinda good for us.

Y’all take care out there.

India Morris is a Lismore-based writer who likes to hurtle down white water rapids whenever she gets the chance.

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It’s a time-honoured tradition – ‘mother-spit’.  But, writes Robert Drewe, it may just be falling out of fashion.  It may even just be ‘yuk’…

Two adjoining tables in a local coffee shop the other day: at one table sit two teenage girls; at the other is a mother and her small son. The boy has chocolate foam from his babyccino on his cheeks. His mother spits on a tissue and wipes one cheek; spits again and cleans the other cheek. The teenagers, aghast, burst into giggles.

“She actually spat on him!” says one girl. “Gross!” agrees the other. The mother reddens, looks bewildered, then angry, gathers up the child and leaves the cafe, muttering. The teenagers are still shaking their heads in disgust.

Are publically-spitting mothers now pariahs? I wondered, recalling the ever-ready damp hankie in the days before the existence of moistened tissue-wipes. In my childhood, every decent mother carried a hankie up her sleeve, down her cleavage or in her handbag — and a ready supply of saliva to go with it.

Mother-spit was used to eliminate Vegemite, milk and chocolate from youthful lips, and dirt and lipstick on cheeks. Mother-spit tamed cowlicks and flyaway hair. Mother-spit cleaned dusty shoes and conditioned your swimming goggles. If you’d been eating a Choo-Choo bar or drinking Milo, your mother needed litres of it. Back then, the American writer Erma Bombeck opined that new mothers were fortunately endowed with an extra spit supply, like milk glands, at pregnancy.

If it’s good enough for lionesses…

Did we children mind being smeared with maternal saliva? Speaking for myself — yes, a bit — but it was a “mother thing” and you had to cop it. But let anyone else do the hankie-spit routine (an aunt, grandmother or, even worse, a female neighbour or friend) and you couldn’t get to the bathroom quick enough to scour your face. Male hankie-spitters? They simply didn’t exist. A father would rather die than do it. They instinctively knew that father-spit was too disgusting for words. Besides, they didn’t care if you had a dirty face.

Sometimes, a grandmother, her feelings hurt by sullen resistance to her soggy hankie, and announcing that you were clearly “going down with something”, might attempt to restore healthy cheerfulness with an all-purpose remedy from her past: a big dose of castor oil or, worse, Hypol cod-liver oil. At the approach of the brimming fishy table-spoon, any child on earth would willingly turn back to that grandma hankie smelling of 4711 cologne.

At least cod-liver oil, in its modern form of Omega-3 fatty-acid tablets, has prevailed as a health remedy. I’m not so sure of Reckitt’s bluebags, for bee stings, or Ford pills, for constipation, although the senna would probably do the trick. (Forget climate change or asylum seekers, irregularity was society’s greatest concern back then.)

Then there were “Dr Williams’ Pink Pills For Pale People”. A combination of iron oxide and magnesium sulphate, they were still being advertised in the 1950s as a cure for “a pale complexion and all forms of weakness in male or female”. They would also fix your St Vitus Dance, nervous headache, palpitations, rheumatism, influenza, “male exhaustion” and “female troubles”.

“Female troubles”, for some reason more prevalent in those days, were the focus of Bex powders as well, with thousands of Australian women in the 1960s being urged by advertisements to have “a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie-down”, until it was realised that the aspirin, phenacetin and caffeine combination was causing widespread kidney disease.

Speaking of yesteryear’s remedies, whatever happened to good old flavine, mercurochrome and Condy’s crystals? In my childhood, Australian kids went proudly out into the world with their bare feet and legs painted the customary yellow, red or purple. Reef cuts, stubbed toes, ringworm, tinea, “school sores”, were all given the technicolour antiseptic treatment.

Feet took a thrashing back then when coastal kids went shoeless. Boys’ feet were painted so boldly with mercurochrome and flavine they looked like they were wearing bright red and yellow socks. As a six-year-old, I found these displays most impressive. Those blackened toenails, grazed ankles, blood-blistered soles, the ingrained dirt and festering reef-cuts criss-crossing their feet, proved a boy’s heroic acquaintance with reefs and searing sand, beach and bush, melting bitumen, bindies (or bindi-eyes), cliffs and broken glass.

It was a case for the bath and a stiff scrubbing brush. No mother ever attempted to spit-clean those feet.

Robert Drewe’s latest book, The Beach, an Australian Passion, has just been published by the National Library of Australia and is available here: the-beach-an-australian-passion His other recent books The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon are on sale here: penguin.com.au

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“Cocaine, don’t touch those lollies!”

That’s what I heard. I guess she probably spelled the name ‘Kokayne’, like those creative spellers who opt for Ondray, Antwonet, Harrysyn, Jaxxon, Mikkaylah, Kristapha, Dannyl, Exavier and Abbergale for their new-borns’ names. And maybe the child had an addictive personality. But clearly, battle lines have been drawn in Australian baby-naming.

For all the private-school Olivers and Emilys, the Thomases and Sophies, and the Royalty-approved choices like Charlotte, George, William, Harry, Charles, Andrew and Kate, there are Australian babies being proudly named after alcohol (Kahlua, Bailey, Tia Maria, Jack Daniel, Bacardee, Shiraz, Chardonnay); cars (Holden, Falcon, Mersaydees, Porscha, Monaro-Brock, Shevrolay, Jaguar); and the weather (Stormie, Tempest, Sunnie, Sunshine, Rainy).

If grog, climate and V8s influenced some of last year’s baby names, parents really pulled out the stops this year.

In 2015 there were small Aussie humans lucky enough to be named after face cream (Nivea), fabric (Denim), gasbag airships (Zeppelin), menstrual cups (JuJu), skaters and surfers’ apparel (Matix), geography (Zealand) and, most popularly, after video-game, film and TV characters (Quorra, Finnick, Kutty, Zuly, Viggo, Berk, Zeek, Simber, Dagon, Blayde and Neo).

There is now a baby girl who owes her name to an acronym beloved of reckless teenagers, Yolo (“You Only Live Once”); a boy called Onix, named after both a metadata format and a cartoon Pokemon character whose body is made of rocks; and another little chap faces life with the name of Braven, after a brand of outdoor wireless Bluetooth speakers.

Welcome to the big, wide world to little Moody as well, and to Posey, Dodge, Patch, Judge, Guru, Jhase, Chynn’nah-Bloo, Heavenleigh, Holiday, Tymber, Anthem, Koy, Rexx, Violina, Gitty, Tiger, Monet and Merci. Greetings, Abcde. (Yes, seriously, that’s A.B.C.D.E.)

Remember when we used to scoff at loopy American kids’ names? We’re catching up pretty fast but perhaps we still have a little way to go to match some names that appeared on the US Social Security register in 2014.

The infant boys called Bullet/Bullit/Bulut, Dagger and Renegade seem to have a grim destiny already charted for them, but Legendary could go either way.

Most American parents are nothing if not optimistic though, at least five last year naming their children Billion, as well as several thinking Royaltee, Princecharles, Kinganthony and Kingmichael might prove advantageous. On the other hand, what possessed the parents of Common, Sadman and Lay?

Foes of creative name-spelling might grind their teeth to learn of the appearance of young Sicilee, Paree, Londynne, Franswah, Mill-Ann and Jerzei. And when she grows up, Payshance, along with Payzley, Kwinn and Vertyu, might hate her parents a little bit more every time she has to spell her name to someone.

These lapses of judgement and taste are blamed partly on the internet and the ludicrous names that, for some possibly competitive reason, celebrities feel bound to select. The parents of Apple, North West, Princess Tiaamii, Sage Moonblood, Kal-El, Kyd, Egypt, Pilot Inspektor, Audio Science, etc. have a lot to answer for.

Anyway, all this naming nonsense has caused a reaction. It’s called Baby-Name Remorse and (not unlike Tattoo Remorse) it’s on the rise. Ten per cent of American mothers say they’ve considered changing their baby’s name. Australian and English figures are hard to come by (each State differs here) but in Scotland, in 2009 alone, 3470 babies had their names changed when their parents had second thoughts.

It’s evident that a surge in numbers occurs after the age of 18, indicating that many children change their name from Shevrolay to Susan, from Guru to Graham, the minute they no longer need parental consent.

In most States a parent can change their child’s given name within 12 months of birth if the baby was born there. After 12 months, or if the baby was born elsewhere, its name can be changed after applying to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

So if you’re already tiring of little Cointreau’s name and reckon Mojito or Pina Collada — something cooler and more summery — would suit her better; or you’ve ditched the old Monaro for a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV; or perhaps decided Hindenburg has a certain proud ring to it, off you go to the Registrar. These names, and plenty of others like them, are still on offer.

And in three or four years young Zeppelin and Kokayne and Chynn’nah-Bloo and the others will face an Australian school playground for the first time, with another 12 years ahead of them, and then the workplace. Best of luck, kids.

Robert Drewe’s latest book, The Beach, an Australian Passion, has just been published by the National Library of Australia and is available here: the-beach-an-australian-passion His other recent books The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon are on sale here: penguin.com.au

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You might recall our interest in such language curiosities as menu-speak, real-estate-speak, and menswear-speak. Police featuring prominently on the TV news lately reminded me of the most bizarre speech pattern of all: cop-talk.

In younger days on newspaper police rounds I spoke to cops on the job and sometimes in the pub, and they spoke like normal Australians (more vigorously and colloquially, in fact). No cop ever said to me: “Whilst presently in attendance in this hotel bar I observe that my glass is empty and I ascertain that it’s your round.”

But in Police Court, or on television, they talked like aliens. This also seemed true of British and American police. I wondered whether police academies trained them to speak in a convoluted way.

The argument that they spoke like this so they couldn’t be legally misinterpreted seemed like nonsense when a “man” became a “male person” or a “male individual”, “while” became “whilst” and “car” became “vehicle”.

An individual in charge of a vehicle, as police prefer to describe him, is less – not more – precise than a man driving a car. (So is the subject maybe driving a bus? A truck? Perhaps a bulldozer?)

I respect what police have to do and endure on a daily basis. But it can’t make their lives any easier to have to learn and speak another tortuous language. Is the gobbledegook designed to confuse the public? To sound important? To preserve a barrier between them and us? To get themselves off the hook if things turn pear-shaped?

A classic court example: Lawyer – “What happened then, officer?”

Copper: “I attempted to apply an escort hold to the individual but I noted resistive tension in his arm so I applied pain compliance instead. The individual actively resisted so I administered a focused knee strike to the lower abdominal area, and decentralized the individual.”

Lawyer: “In other words, you tried to grab my client’s arm, and when he pulled away, you twisted his wrist, and then kicked him in the groin and threw him down on the pavement.”

Copper: “Well, I wouldn’t put it in quite those words.”

You might have noticed that cops don’t get into their cars — they enter police vehicles. They don’t get out of a car either – they exit the vehicle. They don’t go anywhere (nor does anyone else) – they proceed. They don’t go to a particular place – they proceed to its vicinity.

They don’t watch or look – they surveille. They never see anything – they observe it. No one ever tells them anything either – they’re advised. A person doesn’t say something – he indicates. Nor does he tell them his name – he identifies himself. They don’t listen to a telephone conversation – they monitor it.

A brief glossary of common police-speak:

Male person (Man).

Gentleman (Man. Oddly enough, he mightn’t be at all gentlemanly. He might even be a serial killer.)

 Female person (Woman).

Lady (Woman. She needn’t be ladylike though. She might actually be rude and slovenly).

Juvenile person (Child, teenager).

Youth (Troublemaker).

Individual (Suspected person).

Official firearm or sidearm (Gun)

Vehicle (Car).

Myself (I, me).

Whilst (While).

In attendance (There).

In possession of (Has).

I ascertained the location of the residence (I found the house).

Person of interest (The one we’re hoping to arrest).

Police would like to speak with him (We really want to arrest him).

Incident (Anything from disorderly conduct to mass murder).

Attempted to avoid police (Ha! Didn’t).

Police officers apprehended the alleged perpetrator (We caught him).

Is helping police with their inquiries (We’ve dead-set got the bastard).

The individual was observed by myself fleeing on foot from the location (I saw him running away).

Whilst in attendance I ascertained that a firearm had been discharged into the head of a male person whilst lying in bed by an individual in his immediate vicinity (I saw the man had been shot in the head in his bed).

The male person was armed and dangerous and reported to be in possession of an improvised garden implement (The man had a spade).

My absolute favourite example of international cop-speak, however, comes from a recent incident at Dallas airport, when I saw a traveller try to pat a sniffer dog.

Police officer, tersely: “Do not touch the Federal agent!”

Robert Drewe’s most recent books The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon are on sale here: penguin.com.au

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Poor old kale, fashionable no longer. What a shame. (I had a kale pizza by mistake in Murwillumbah recently, and I won’t make that mistake again.) And how sad that quinoa is on the way out, too, just as everyone finally learned how to pronounce it. Being a chic vegetable is no picnic these days.

These musings on the short life of food fads came to me while listening to ABC News Radio. Yes, Australians are now so driven by dining trends that the arrival of a new one makes the national news bulletins.

This particular item was about bone broth. It said that bone broth was on the crest of a culinary tidal wave. This was indeed news to me – bone broth sounded even duller than the Canberra news I’d tuned in to. But as I lag far behind in food fashions I Googled ‘bone broth’ and found it was true – t

The bone broth fad has been sweeping America, with bone broth bars popping up everywhere. Instead of office workers going for a morning coffee, they’re  lining up for a cup of bone broth. And now the craze is flooding Australia.

Why, apart from us copying America as usual? Well, bone broth’s adherents claim that animal bones simmered for up to 48 hours have great health benefits. The broth is part of the trendy paleo diet and its close relative, the primal diet, which disagree about what cavemen ate (primal allows some dairy, which paleo forbids), but agree that cavemen munched heaps of bones and that their diet was immensely healthy. (Sad that they died out.)

Bones, whether beef, pork, chicken or fish, already form the basis for all broths. But it took some bright spark to emphasise their soupy role, and extend it to 48 hours. Bone devotees were quick to point out bones’ high collagen content, which they believed led to stronger human bones, glowing skin and shiny hair. They claimed that the broth’s long simmering stage meant that more nutrients leached into the liquid, improving immune function.

‘The fourth food prediction is seaweed, and who hasn’t been keenly waiting for seaweed to make the transition from sushi rolls to seaweed butter and seaweed beer?’

Moreover, bone broth, in the words of nutritionist Liz Wolfe, is: “very calmative. It’s psychological. It’s like Grandma made. It’s like a vitamin and mineral supplement in a warm, delicious package.”

As I listened avidly, the Manager of Melbourne’s popular online butcher shop Cherry Tree Organics, Kate Blundy, told the ABC that bones had suddenly become one of her most popular products, second only to mince. And butcher Kerin Ambler, from Campbell’s Quality Meats, said more and more people had started sourcing bones for broth. “We don’t throw out bones any more. We don’t have enough bones to meet demand.”

As kale and quinoa fade from foodie consciousness, and bone broth looms large, what are the other next food trends? The many online food sites all have their predictions, but I noticed five crazes that they all foresee.

Kaniwa is the first, and how annoying it is for another “super-grain” to replace quinoa while sounding almost like it, so that smart alecs who have mastered saying quinoa (keen-wa) will constantly be correcting your pronunciation. Anyway, kaniwa (ka-nyi-wa), is a relative of quinoa that also originates in South America and is reddish-brown, with a nutty flavour. High in protein and gluten-free, it can be used in salads, pilafs and soups or as a breakfast food.

The second, already popular with dieting celebrities, is an Ethiopian “super-grain” called teff, favoured in the old days by Haile Selassie and by long-distance runners today. Teff is used as a hot breakfast cereal like porridge but sounds less old-fashioned and stodgy to say.

As the kale craze wanes, the drab old cauliflower is predicted to shine. Long considered broccoli’s poor cousin, this third trending foodstuff is becoming a regular on restaurant menus, jazzed up with spices. Cauliflower steaks (and I don’t begin to understand that particular designation) are a big hit in the US.

The fourth food prediction is seaweed, and who hasn’t been keenly waiting for seaweed to make the transition from sushi rolls to seaweed butter and seaweed beer? It’s high in iodine and purportedly excellent for detoxing, so watch out for dishes which include wakame, kombu and dulse. Be the first in your dinner circle to get into the algae act.

The fifth prediction is for fermented foods, like kimchi, miso and sauerkraut, and their so-called probiotic powers. The fermentation trend is predicted to go mainstream with home cooks creating their own sauerkraut and kombucha.

I’m not sure about seaweed butter and seaweed beer. Or bone broth, for that matter. It reminds me of Stone Soup, the old folk story where hungry strangers with an empty cooking pot trick the local townsfolk into sharing their food, a clever confidence trick that benefits everyone — especially the tricksters.

Robert Drewe’s most recent books The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon are on sale here: penguin.com.au

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