Emissions: Kilian Doyle is in Australia
As I sit down to write this, it's just beginning to trickle down with the first few tentative drops of a downpour. The weather forecaster is warning of gale force winds gusting at up to 80 mph and possible flooding. And I'm smiling happily to myself, because by the time you lovely people read this, I'll be sitting on a beach enjoying a balmy Australian summer, debating whether to surf the right-hand point break reeling away nicely in front of me or just continue frying my lilywhite skin.
Australia, by all accounts, is one of these truly larger than life places, where men are men and girls are grateful. It's, as a Sydney-dwelling mate proudly noted, the only country in the so-called first world that still allows the driving of V12 Chargers, monstrous beasts whose batteries could power a small Co Leitrim village.
The Aussie driving experience begins and, although its star is waning of late, ends with their indigenous crate, the Holden. Designed with the aesthetic appeal of a corrugated iron garden shed that's been welded to a couple of wheelbarrows, the Holden was the epitome of pure, no-nonsense functionality. Even the company's former sales slogan ("Ripper deal, Holden cars!") let you know exactly the level of namby-pambyness to expect. But, like the beer-swilling, "roo-shooting", rugby-playing Aussie bloke, its days are numbered.
With the decline of the family unit, the old Holden family sedan is gradually losing its market share to young urbanites buying four-wheel drives to mirror their own self-centred rapaciousness. However, unlike the cretins who drive them through cities in Ireland, at least our Antipodean chums have reasonable justification for buying the things . . . their country is over 90 per cent wilderness, after all. But there are always some clowns who have to spoil it for everyone.
Lest you have forgotten, my slant on these beauties is that any city-dwelling 4WD driver who doesn't, at all times, have incontrovertible evidence of having been on a farm, forest or other similar environs within the past seven days deserves to be dragged - kicking and screaming if needs be - from their vehicle and subjected to a public wedgie. Male or female, young or old, fit or infirm, it matters not, I'm not discriminatory.
I'm not alone in this. The former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, recently described them as "a pox" on cities. By all accounts, this feller is just slightly to the left of Genghis Khan, but at least we agree on one thing. "If I had my way, I'd tax them off the roads and feel very good about doing it," he said.
You'd almost be inclined to grant him permanent dictatorship privileges, if he'd just stick to that one point and ignore all the other nonsense that got him elected.
Speaking of dictators, another thing the Aussies share with us is a colonised past. We Irish have been getting our own back for years, slowly crushing the British psyche by filling their poor little minds with guff from the Corrs to Boyzone and Westlife, while the Aussies seem to have abandoned the Rolf Harris approach in favour of the lunchtime soap offensive. Between us, we'll have 'em on their knees within 10 years.
In the meantime, we're still driving on the bloody wrong side of the road to the rest of the planet. It probably doesn't matter so much to the Aussies, as I can't imagine they bring their Holdens on foreign holidays.
But us? Until we swop over to left-hand drive motoring, we'll forever be subjected to supercilious mockery every time we drive our backwards cars off a ferry in Normandy. "Ah, you Irish, you are just like the English, except more fertile," the customs officers sneer as they lean in the passenger window, their eyes squinted theatrically as they leer over at the driver in the distance.
Although, if we do change over, we'd be wise to learn from the Ghanaian experience. As a kid, I remember gleefully reading a clipping from a Ghanaian newspaper, reproduced in Private Eye magazine. It was with great pride, the article said, that the government of Ghana had announced they would be throwing off the colonialist's mantle and switching over to driving on the right. However, in order to prevent a massive shock to the infant infrastructure of the country, "the change will be made gradually". The mind boggles.