Pop-ups: The newest fad in town

To ‘pop up’ as we all know is to appear quite suddenly, out of nowhere. It usually used to refer to people. When I was young, my dad’s workmate Johnny used to pop up quite punctually at dinner time and always intone that he’d, “Just popped by for a visit.”

As a result of this, my mother became an exponent of the ‘eye roll’ and performed this first with restraint and tact and later with abandon, accompanied by a sigh.

My own fear of dogs can be credited to another pop-up artist with the Romanesque name, Caesar. A bulldog and destined never to win the Mr Handsome Dog Award, he took to leaping as high as he could — and without warning, the leap accompanied by a guttural bark, every time I walked past the Pereira’s house on my way to school.

You’d think that after one or two incidents of jumping out of my skin, thanks to Caesar’s popping-up, that I’d be on my guard. But no, I fell into daydreaming so quickly — and what better time to daydream than when walking to school — that I fell into Caesar’s trap so often that the dog, I’m sure, thought I was one half of a game he’d invented.

Years later, I had absolutely no problem identifying with Mrs Bucket when something similar happened to her quite repeatedly in the television series Keeping Up Appearances.

Anyhow, as I was saying we’ve come to associate pop-ups usually with people, or animals. But now, in the state of New South Wales, we’ve got our first pop-up prison! That’s right, a jail has virtually sprung up out of nowhere (it took just a year to build!) and it is, allegedly, going to deal with the business of prison overcrowding.

In what to my ears sounds like a touch of luxury, the article says that ‘twenty-five maximum security prisoners will be kept in each dormitory and have access to their own cubicle!’ The exclamation mark is mine.

That said, there are vociferous opponents to the ‘dormitory’ system which, they allege, will leave prisoners “open to bullying and inhibit their rehabilitation”.

I guess if you’re on to a good thing, you just roll with it because New South Wales has gone pop-up with schools as well. Quick, makeshift facilities have been constructed — in the blink of an eye, in building terms — to house pupils whose main school is to be renovated and restored. And while this is happening, they will be educated from the ‘pop-up’ across the road.

I’m not sure if these very children will have their footwear scrutinised closely, but over in Brisbane in the neighbouring state of Queensland, a dilemma of sorts has ‘popped up’. That is, students of state schools must wear ‘black leather lace-up school shoes, which have a heel no greater than 20 millimetres and no lower than five millimetres’. I can just envision a whole host of teachers with measuring tapes, popping up out of nowhere to check for footwear specifications. It sounds like a system gone silly.

“Utterly ridiculous,” is how one parent described the new rules. ‘We’re a single-income household, it’s just me, it’s not like I’m sending her to school in completely ridiculous shoes. It’s not like they’re purple, fine,’ said one mum.

But as is so often the case when a dilemma springs up, there are those who see things from a different perspective. One person, obviously in favour of the school move, said: “In my school days, everyone complied with school and uniform regulations, no one dared to question them. Nowadays, everyone seems to want to change the system to suit themselves. Why don’t parents find out what the school uniform requirements are, before buying uniforms etc and then comply with them?”

Over here, in New South Wales, you get the feeling that everyone’s waiting with bated breath for the Queensland situation to ‘pop’. they’re perfectly

■ Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.