The Full Catastrophe Read online

  I’m not a bad cook. I’ve got a few minor specialties. Despite that, I am by far the worst cook in my family. My mum, dad, sisters, and brothers-in-law are all outstanding in the kitchen – joyful, intrepid and effortless cooks. I, on the other hand, take about five hours to make a curry, by which time I’ve usually lost my appetite and need to lie down. So, my parents very kindly try to compensate for my relative lack of culinary expertise by sending specially made ‘care packs’ home with me, whenever my visit with them is over.

  At first, these were small, freshly cooked and frozen bundles of my favourite meals: beef rendang, bean and mince casserole, lamb curry – all carefully wrapped and insulated in cling wrap, paper, foil, and string, ready for the flight back to Sydney. It took me a while to get used to taking food from Mum and Dad’s fridges (yes, fridges). But I also came to accept that it was easier than trying to explain why I wouldn’t. And truthfully, these little takeaway packs are a lifesaver. They’re a taste of home, they’re easy, and they spare me the effort and frustration of trying to cook something appetising for myself. Everyone I know is deeply envious and relishes the prospect of an invitation to join me for a freshly defrosted pack of curry.

  Over time, these care packs have grown in number and variety. During one of my recent trips to Perth, Mum and Dad had again packed some parcels of food for me to take home. These were not small containers. Each one held about three to four servings. We were rushing to leave for the airport when Mum asked, ‘Have you taken the food?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot!’ I replied. ‘It’s too late. I’ve got to leave now.’

  ‘No,’ Mum said, ‘Dad has cooked it especially for you. Don’t you want it?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ I said.

  She reached into the freezer and pulled out one … two … three takeaway packs.

  I was feeling impatient, embarrassed, and also delighted. Mindful I was in danger of missing my flight, I also wondered how much more there was to come as she reached into the freezer again. Four … five … six … seven care packs!

  Heavens!

  I quickly hurled the frozen curries into my suitcase, said thank you, and ran out the door.

  I arrived at the airport a little flustered, but on time. I checked in my suitcase, and raced towards the gate. I arrived at the baggage screening area, removed my laptop from my bag, took my belt off and sent it down the conveyor belt.

  I stepped through the metal detector. No problems there. Then, I saw my bag on the screening monitor; it was stopped deep inside the scanning machine. The security officer gestured to a colleague, who turned to me and said, ‘Sir, we’re just going to put your bag through the machine again.’ At this point I felt a sense of dread wash over me, and I quietly wondered, Oh no. How am I going to explain this?

  To help you appraise my anxiety, I need to take you back to the house an hour earlier. After I’d hastily tucked the frozen curries into my suitcase, I was racing towards the front door when Mum said, ‘What about the chicken?’

  Fully aware that I already had the beef, lamb, pork and beans in my suitcase, I turned to her and asked, ‘What chicken?’

  ‘The chicken,’ she said, pulling out a whole roasted chicken from the freezer. A whole chicken!

  Baffled, and nervous about missing my flight, I said, ‘Mum, I’m not taking the chicken! I’m not flying a roast chicken with me to the other side of the country.’

  She couldn’t understand my concern.

  ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘We’ve got chickens in Sydney. In the shops. I don’t even need to catch them. I’ll be fine!’

  She persisted. ‘Dad made this for you. It’s all packed and ready to go. It’s yours. Why wouldn’t you take it?’

  I capitulated, and gratefully took the chicken. But because my suitcase was already full, the chicken had to go into my hand luggage.

  So there we were, at the airport. As I watched my bag do a second round of the screening machine, I wondered how I was going to explain the small carcass splayed inside my bag. It also suddenly occurred to me that I might be breaking quarantine laws by attempting to transport this chicken across borders, so I agonised about the prospect of unintentionally starring in an episode of Border Security. It was also no help that this roast chicken was generously wrapped in foil, so it looked as if I was carrying a cannonball in my bag.

  ‘Sir, could you open your bag. Tell me, what is this?’

  ‘Yes, well … that’s a chicken,’ I mutter quietly.

  ‘A chicken, sir?’

  ‘Well, yes. But it’s roasted. It’s not alive.’ I felt overcome with embarrassment, and the simultaneous urge to burst out laughing.

  While all this was taking place, a steady stream of people passed through the metal detectors and overheard this exchange. A few of them had a familiar look in their eye. As someone who works on ABC television, I know this look well. They were surveying me, and thinking, I know you. You’re the one. You’re that … that guy from … SBS! And all I could think to say in response was, ‘Hello, yes, I’m Anton Enus from SBS. Nice to meet you. Have a pleasant flight. Goodbye.’

  As the security officer continued to scrutinise my chicken and the other contents of my bag, I comforted myself with the thought that she must see many strange things, and that my chicken must surely be relatively inoffensive.

  After a brief but tense exchange, she let me go with my roast chicken. Victory for the chicken and me. I tucked the roast back into my bag and ran towards my departure gate, putting on my sunnies and pulling my beanie low over my face to anonymise my humiliation, but inadvertently I appeared like the wildlife smuggler I just swore I wasn’t.

  I’m pleased to report that after nearly five hours in the air, the chicken made it to Sydney, intact and still frozen solid. My fellow passengers were none the wiser.

  I caught the train home, and just as we pulled out of Central Station, I reflected on my journey. I always miss Mum and Dad. They’re generous and very good to me. I marvelled how, in a matter of a few hours, I could travel 3300 kilometres from their home to mine, on the other side of the country, with meals cooked from recipes I can trace all the way back to India. I closed my eyes, and could picture my parents, hear them, and smell the aromas of their kitchen. In fact, at that very moment, I could specifically smell lamb curry.

  I opened my eyes and there, pooling at my feet, a slow drip, drip, drip of defrosting curry gravy, leaking out of my suitcase. In my haste to leave Mum and Dad’s house, I decided to forego wrapping and insulating these care packs. I hadn’t bothered because the curries usually make the journey so well that I thought even without the copious amounts of wrapping, she’ll be right.

  Well mate, she wasn’t.

  When I got home, I opened by suitcase to find my clothes and toiletries marinating in melting curry. ‘Well! This. Is. A. Catastrophe,’ I said to myself, as I slumped onto the floor. ‘It’s a first-world catastrophe, but it’s still a catastrophe.’

  But here’s the thing about catastrophes such as this: if my grandparents could see how their children cook curries using the family recipes, and send these tasty parcels flying across Australia on a marvellous jetliner, with a ticket their grandson had bought himself, only to tell the tale in a book – they would call it the very opposite of a catastrophe. They would say, ‘This is what we worked so hard for. We are so very proud of all of you. But … are you hungry?’

  Out Cold in Hot Japan

  Deborah Knight

  HOLIDAYS SEEM LIKE such a good idea at the time. Tired from work – tick. Spend time with your loved ones – tick. Time to relax and reset – tick.

  Except when you have three young kids like I have, who are eight, seven and one. The first mistake is to put children under five on a plane for more than fifteen minutes, and it goes downhill from there. Our holidays are a long way from the cocktails and sunsets you see on some people’s Instagram feeds. Actually, I think we need to be far more realistic about what holiday snaps we post on Instagram. Let’s embrace t
he catastrophe of travel on social media. Yes, when it comes to family holidays, we have had catastrophes in spades.

  There was a particularly memorable holiday a few years ago with our two kids – aged two and three at that stage – to Japan.

  I was a bit naughty and decided to fudge it with our two-year-old so we could have access to a bassinet on the flight. I said she was shorter and younger than she actually was. We had to jam her in to the bassinet, knees up, head poking out. When they were delivering the meals, the flight attendants looked at me with absolute contempt. But we got her in there, just, and had a reprieve from nursing her on our laps.

  When you arrive in a foreign country with young children – well, that’s an excellent life choice too – you are totally out of your comfort zone. We prised our two-year-old out of the bassinet and disembarked, arriving in Tokyo in the peak of summer. We can cope with that, we thought. After all, we cope with Sydney in summer.

  We were immediately assaulted by the heat. It was intense.

  We thought we’d take the train from Narita airport into Tokyo with the kids and all the baggage. Yes, all the baggage. Five large suitcases in total. Because for some reason I thought that instead of buying nappies when we got there, I should bring them all with me, three weeks’ worth in the suitcase. Also, rather than purchase snacks in Japan, I would bring three weeks’ worth with me because, heaven forbid, what if one of the kids couldn’t eat their organic, free-range sultanas while on holiday? Got to protect that delicate Australian palate.

  There we were, walking along with our five suitcases stacked and teetering on a luggage trolley, when we were confronted by a row of bollards in our way. We had to pull the luggage off while carrying the kids with us. Next, because the heat was so intense, we decided that before catching the train, we should change the kids out of the clothes they were wearing. The only problem was that we couldn’t see a place to change them, so we did it right there on the concourse at the train station, with people all around us.

  Eventually, while we were trying to get all the luggage together and plan our next move, the kids started playing that game kids love to play – running around in circles and laughing. It was all good until the younger one tripped, fell hard, hit her head and was knocked unconscious. Out. Cold.

  What should we do?

  My husband had some basic language skills picked up years ago while travelling through Japan for about three weeks. But I suspected he hadn’t mastered the phrase ‘My toddler has a concussion.’ Nevertheless, he took off with the limp child in his arms to try to find some help.

  I stood there, surrounded by luggage, holding the hand of my conscious child, wondering how I was going to find out where he had gone. Neither of us had a working phone.

  After a while he returned with our daughter in his arms, screaming. It was one of those times when crying is the best sound in the world. So, we thought, she’s okay and alert. If she fell unconscious again we’d head to a hospital, but until then we would barrel on.

  At last, we arrived in Tokyo. It was our first time using Airbnb and we thought we were hip and groovy. But the quaint apartment we were staying in, which looked so good in the photographs, was actually adjacent to a major construction site. The buildings in Japan have to be earthquake-proof, and the workers were doing the kind of foundation-shaking construction required by local building codes from dawn to dusk the entire time we were there. Also, we could smell a raw cabbage stench coming from the immense, deep hole they were digging into the earth.

  The three-year-old was in heaven – he loved the diggers and bulldozers and trucks – but we decided we couldn’t stay there a moment longer and so we found a serviced apartment.

  Overall it was a great holiday and we had a great time. The Japanese are incredibly polite and helpful, especially with children. They would give us quizzical looks as we squeezed onto the train in the Tokyo summer heat at peak hour, my husband with a backpack, me with the stroller and all the stuff you need when you travel with kids – bags and toys galore – and the two children. They thought we were insane.

  They were even nice when we lost things, which happened a lot. My son had a red car, a Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars, which he lost in an enormous food hall. We enlisted about ten staff to find his beloved car. It took us over two hours but we found it. As we left the food hall we walked past a gigantic toy store with an elaborate window display with about a thousand toy cars exactly the same as the one we had been searching for all that time.

  The final catastrophic moment of the trip: we’d finished dinner at a restaurant and we were close to end of my three-week stash of nappies, so my husband went off to buy some more. I was preoccupied with my two-year-old when I looked around and realised the three-year-old was gone. No longer in the restaurant. I rushed to the door and looked out to a scene of Kyoto at peak hour, a sea of people. That’s it, I thought, I’ll never see him again.

  I grabbed a chair from the restaurant and stood on it. I thought I might see his blond bobbing head in the throng.

  Sure enough, coming through the crowd, holding the hands of two smiling people, there he was, having a great time, calm as could be.

  I am now a huge fan of writing my phone number on my children’s arms, even though they roll their eyes at me when I do. If we’re going to the Easter Show, out comes the felt-tip pen.

  When it comes to holidays, they aren’t relaxing, but they are life-affirming, bonding experiences where you get to observe how your partner copes under pressure.

  I hope to take the kids to Japan again someday, without the nappies and the sultanas but with a phrase book of essential medical terms, just in case.

  A Greek Tragedy … Or why you should never give up until the final siren sounds

  Wendy Harmer

  HAULING YOUR SORRY, dumped arse to a comedy festival seems like the perfect way to mend a broken heart. Especially if it’s as far away as Scotland and you can put almost 17,000 kilometres and two continents between you and the dreaded ex.

  The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is just the ticket for what ails a lovelorn Aussie lassie.

  Thousands of funny shows to choose from that have you crying with laughter in the anonymous dark. Drinking the bars dry with lovely, red-headed Scottish boys. Wandering deserted cobblestone streets in the witching hours, serenaded by pissed caterwauling bagpipers belting out ‘Loch Lomond’.

  With a few wee drams under the belt it’s easy to cast yourself as Aggie, poor servant girl turned out from Inverary Castle by the wicked Duke of Argyll. Starring in one’s own tragic historical drama is sure to bring on a bout of epic, ugly crying. Very therapeutic.

  At dawn, breakfast is taken on the bluestone steps of a bakery. Beef and onion bridies with brown sauce – sauce so named because it has no other characteristic. It’s nae hot, it’s nae spicy. It’s just brun. Stumbling into your shared digs, stepping over suitcases, falling into bed and sleeping, dreamlessly, till late afternoon. Then doing it all again the next day and night.

  Three solid weeks of this punishing regime should see any broken heart out of ICU and on the road to recovery.

  Och, aye!

  However, it’s an entirely different matter if you’re going to the festival to bring the laughs as a stand-up comedian, hideously cursed with knowing all the maudlin lyrics to ‘The Bonnie Banks O’ Loch Lomond’.

  O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,

  And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye,

  But me and my true love will never meet again,

  On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

  ’Twas there that we parted, in yon shady glen,

  On the steep, steep side o’ Ben Lomond,

  Where in soft purple hue, the hieland hills we view,

  And the moon coming out in the gleaming.

  The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was where I found myself in the early nineties, bereft and broken-hearted. I’d been to the festival before, in shows with
other comics, and one year I went with him. But this time, the airfares and accommodation were just for me after the Mother of All Break Ups.

  (A tip. Never ask the question: ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’ unless you’re prepared for the answer to be a tight-lipped, ‘No.’)

  That year, my world in Melbourne had shrunk to a few blocks around St Kilda’s Acland Street and the band room at the Esplanade Hotel I haunted as a forlorn, hard-drinking ghost of my former self. I couldn’t face driving north over the Punt Road Bridge in case I ran into them. My old haunts of Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond, home of the mighty Tigers, my Aussie Rules footy team, were out of bounds.

  One time I’d crossed the Yarra, saw them and quickly retreated across the bridge to my small flat near the beach. Or should I say, our old flat where every meal for one – usually a Salada biscuit with Vegemite and cheese and a bottle of Shiraz – was taken like a penance. To describe myself as miserable doesn’t go close. I was a shambling, cried-out, puffy-eyed wreck of a woman.

  With a few gigs booked, television interviews and radio spots already scheduled at The Fringe, it seemed as good an escape plan as any. So, packing a suitcase with a few shards of broken heart, some half-decent jokes and a tiny scrap of self-esteem in a toiletries bag, I headed to Edinburgh.

  Just me this time. Taking the low road to Scotland.

  Fetching up in Edinburgh that late August, I’d booked into an upscale hotel just off the main drag in Princes Street. In the past I’d shared rowdy, crowded flats with other comics and him, but this time I figured the luxurious solitude would be a comfort. (A mistake, obviously.)

  That wasn’t the only difference to my past forays at The Fringe. Instead of presenting a full show with fellow comedians in the one venue at the decent hour of 8 or 10 pm, this time I’d put together a grab bag of solo stand-up gigs and MC work in the clubs that only got going at midnight and stayed open until the heaving small hours. That meant I’d have to stay sober all evening and by the time I got off stage, my usual posse of drinking mates were ready for bed. (Second mistake, even more obvious.)