John Butlerwonders why Australians are so much better than us at expressing their opinions.
A few years ago I worked with an Australian couple in Dublin. They travel well, the Aussies, like us, and we found ourselves sitting outside the office, me listening as they compared here with there. I hadn't been there at this stage, and I heard them talk about how their part of the world was a perfect reflection of ours, how alike either end of the earth was, despite the distance. "The same but different" seemed to sum it up nicely, and I wasn't surprised. I knew the water down there circled anticlockwise after the flush, but at least there's water circling down there.
A shy colleague then returned from the supermarket with a sandwich and a 24-pack of toilet roll. My Australian friend calmly took in the view and, without waiting for her to arrive within regular earshot, said at the top of his voice: "That's a lot of toilet roll, Anna. Is everything okay?"
As a number of smokers broke off their conversations to check out the freak show, and Anna skulked inside with shame, I sensed that although these people also ate sausage rolls and flung an oval ball around, the little differences amounted to a personality that was a world away from our own.
I had forgotten all about this until I was in Sydney for Christmas and my brother, who lives there, returned from the local pool with a story. He had been sitting in the sauna with two Spanish guys and an Australian woman. He was hung over and hoping the sauna would take some of the pain away, but the two Spanish guys were talking to each other loudly and in Spanish (as they are prone to do), and it was hurting his head.
After a few minutes of him stewing beside them but saying nothing, the Australian woman turned and said: "Sorry, guys, but would you stop talking so loud? It's just that the noise of your voices is really annoying to listen to." Silence. "Thanks a lot, guys," she said, then flashed an uncomplicated smile at them and sat back.
You're wading into a swamp of political incorrectness when you start talking about national characteristics. One flag does not represent a national personality type - not all Japanese people are unfailingly polite, and the French are not all extravagantly gifted and imaginative lovers. But every Australian seems unburdened by what other people think and is, therefore, uniquely uninhibited.
The sauna conversation doesn't happen in Ireland, and I don't think it's because we're too polite. In fact, Ireland is now thought to be awash with a strain of rudeness last found in Manhattan and Margaret Thatcher's London. Besides, as my brother described it, there was nothing rude about the woman in the sauna: she was just being frank, which is different.
She didn't attack with the defensiveness of someone who had wound themselves tight for 20 minutes beforehand. She hadn't even stewed for more than five seconds. She noticed, then she spoke, challenging two men about the noise of their voices in a steam-filled room, wearing only a dental-floss bikini.
I normally decide not to comment on something that annoys me, because if I've even thought about saying something it's because I have allowed that certain something to affect me so personally that I am worried, genuinely worked up, about what may happen, how it may go down.
Sometimes I make such a big deal of it in my mind beforehand that the event has already been ruined by my thinking something and saying nothing.
This is unhealthy. Take talking at the cinema, a favoured pastime around the world and one we in Ireland are particularly brilliant at. The standard response here is the passive-aggressive hint of displeasure: eyes rolled heavenward, clucking, sideways glances and so on. Later that evening cars will prang each other in the car park as frustrated cinema-goers take it on to the streets.
And our not saying something won't stop there. If you've ever received evil glares in Spar on a Wednesday for no particular reason that you can think of, it's because you were talking during the 10.10 showing of Little Miss Sunshine the previous Tuesday week.
If you were Australian you'd already know this, because you would have gone up and asked. Or, alternatively, you wouldn't have noticed the glares, because you're not concerned by what anyone thinks of you.
There's nothing like going away to make you think about what it means to be Irish and to recognise the little things they have that we could do with at home. In fact it's the main topic of conversation among expats.
I put on a wash on New Year's Day, having decided that 2007 would be a year of fragrance and hygiene. Ten minutes later I went to get a cap (for cappuccino is too long to say) and realised with horror that my money was in my wallet in my jeans in the machine in bleached hot water. My brother then pointed out that money in Australia is waterproof. You go surfing with a pocketful of legal tender and it comes out equally legal, equally tender.
I was so happy that we ditched the idea of a cap and went for a game of lawn bowls and a few schooners, and because they're only three-quarters of a pint each we felt magic the next day.
It wasn't until I was on my flight home that I realised the only thing Australia has that we could all do with back home is all the people we love who live there.