Every now and then there is a news event that just shakes you to your very foundations, and you'll always remember where you were when you heard this news. I will always remember standing outside my local fish-and-chip shop when a kid in my class told me John Lennon had been murdered. I remember picking up my oldest child, then a few months old, from his cot for his morning breast feed, and turning on the radio and hearing a sobbing, frightened caller wondering what was going to happen now, prompting me to turn on television and watch in the most abject horror the footage of the World Trade Centre being divebombed by an aeroplane, combusting into a hellish inferno, and subsequently crumbling in a dusty, stony heap.
Then there is the news which clogged my newsfeed today: Bunnings hardware stores have issued a direction that the onions go on the bread first when assembling the sausage sangers at the outdoor sausage sizzle. There was outrage - well, according to the MSM there was outrage, but it is likely to be as confected as the pink fairy floss spun at the town show. But in any event, there are people who appear to be genuinely pissed off about it. In God's name: why? WHY do people care about such insignificant things? Yes, I know it's the little niggly things that often drive you insane, but getting worried about the onions going on the bread first is a bit petty. Besides, it's to minimise the chance of onion falling to the ground and creating a slip hazard, which would see Bunnings sued should some hapless dunderhead tread on it and go for a skid, kind of like some cartoon character on a banana peel. You don't have to worry if the onion goes on the bread first, people. Look, I know I get very concerned if people put in milk before boiling water when preparing a cup of instant coffee, but that's different: there is a special corner in Hell reserved for people who do this. If you prepare my coffee in this manner, on the very rare occasions I deign to drink instant coffee (I drink the proper stuff!), I will pour it into the pot plant the moment your back is turned (and hope like crazy the plant is not an artificial one).
But yeah, everyone was carrying on like someone had shit on a portrait of their mothers over this heinous act of - *clutches imaginary pearls and places hand against forehead in an 'oh, woe is me' gesture* - putting the onion on the bread before placing the sausage. I saw a vox pop conducted by Channel 9, and started to count down from ten. I hadn't even reached five when someone uttered the phrase guaranteed to get me on the roof of the clock tower with a gun: 'It's un-Australian'. Oh, fuck me sideways with a toaster, I HATE that phrase! 'Un-Australian'. What the hell does that even mean, for fuck's sake? Does everybody have to adhere to some methodology or ideology that was prevalent in the 1950s in order to prove their allegiance to this country? (On a side note: I am going to start working on a post dealing with words or phrases that need to be put in the garbage bin).
In a country where approximately seventy women have been murdered in episodes of domestic violence already this year, do we really need to concern ourselves with the assemblage of a fucking greasy sausage sandwich? GET OVER IT, EVERYBODY! It's not going to rupture the time/space continuum.
In my first paragraph, I mentioned the phenomenon of people remembering the exact moments they received crucial news stories of the day. Well, I will always remember a November morning in 1991 when I got up to get ready for work. I was living in a flat in Bondi, NSW. I probably wasn't looking forward to going into the office. My flatmate was buttering her toast and said, 'Freddie Mercury's died of AIDS.' I was so, so saddened. Many years later, I've spawned a kid who is also a music tragic, and who happens to be totally nuts about Freddie Mercury and Queen. After my first day at the Scone Literary Festival last Saturday, we went to the local cinema and watched Bohemian Rhapsody. It's your standard biopic insomuch as formula goes, but Oh-My-God the performances were beyond sublime! The recreation of Queen's performance at the Live Aid concert was just mind-boggling. The Live Aid concert was such an incredible technical feat for the time, and whilst musicians had partaken in charity performances previously (like George Harrison's Bangladesh fundraiser), this was majorly ground breaking in terms of technical production and scale of audience. And I would submit it was the seminal moment in pop culture for my generation.
I adored the movie, and was at one point close to ugly-crying. Freddie Mercury, you are so very missed; a talented man taken by a cruel, unforgiving disease.
So, my advice to everyone is to see the movie, and stop worrying about onions being on the bread before the sausage in the old sausage sanger.
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