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Ramble tamble

Don’t worry (or do nae fash yersel’ in Swahili) … we’ll be back into the dark politics soon enough.

Finding yourself with time to reflect is not always a good thing at this age … it prevents things getting done … things you’re convinced at the time are necessary, but ultimate mean little. And if your life’s been all over the place and your memory barely patchy now, then surprises still take you from the past.

I was going to write sonething about the uncanny way … you can be sure it was never planned more than a short time ahead … the uncanny way I spent the ends of decades over here and the middles of decades downunder … also the way the 3rd year in a decade and the 8th tended to have major changes for me … not always, e.g. 2023 did not seem to have any major changes I know, but 2008 did.

I was going to write about that but realised it was boring. Another equally boring theme was the years through music … for example, I was at the MCG (scene of yesterday’s cricket farce), watching a Grand Final between Melbourne and Collingwood and there’s a distinct memory of the stand … these were multi tier concrete extrusions and being between two was daunting, also a long way from the playing field, in the northern ladies stand, also it was not an exciting game … also, someone had a radio on and some new song about Bread and Butter was playing … I thought it was catchy, the singer had a weird voice.

Which was weird in itself because my team was Leeds United with Don Revie, which itself was weird because we were Bingley Bradford based with Park Avenue being the team, soon to come into focus again with Billy Bremner and my fave Peter Lorimer. It’s a bit like this later attachment to Geelong, having never lived in that town.

Thing is … was … my life was never like in JJ Cale’s Call Me the Breeze or in The Eagles’ Desperado:

Many fine things were laid upon my table and I was perfectly happy to enjoy them for years … often until changes were forced upon me … upon us … by changing times … or women. A look at my history shows long periods in one place, admittedly dotted with plane trips to other places to spend a few weeks.

Time machine cranked up … back to a few decades back … for some crazy reason, while I was generally on the water here, sailing:

… I was also, one day, at that football ground beside it at a major league reserves game between South Melbourne and Geelong and for some crazy reason, I thought it would be fun to help out the Gee cheer squad helping hold the megabanner on that turf … ten feet from where this captain was standing:

The key there is in his agility. In rugby, as my job was to bring down big men (I was open side flanker, reasoning that it was better to hit them than they hit me) … I relied heavily on the lumbering of big men, whereas I was fast off the mark, often avoiding haymakers, then getting in some of my own.

On this day, this man … 6’4″ and 240 lbs, was talking to his lot and then he turned, looked at me and kept looking. Errrr … thoughts of escape entered the head. Then he turned back to them … phew. Thinking later about what had interested him, I knew in “one point something seconds” he could have covered those ten feet and laid me out … maybe I did not seem like a cheer squad type, who knows?

Particular years fade into obscurity over time but certain incidents stand out. Why did I live through the Russian financial collapse, then come home to the British one? Stormy Petroleum I suppose. Why was I in north-eastern France in a farmhouse, the daughter showing me her pet duck and the following Friday we had her own homemade foie gras, never seeing her pet again? These things are sent to puzzle us.

Hubby of the lass I’ve known longest … since I was ten … he said I was a drifter … nope, I stay for longish periods … on the other hand, if something’s happening, I used to be in the middle of it.

You?