G’day Possums,
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| Shane at the G |
Mrs Wombat and I went to the “footy”at the “G”.
It was the Melbourne vs. St.Kilda game and we attended
because A/ these are our respective childhood teams and B/ we hadn’t been to a
game in a long while .... and not because we’re closet aficionados of
sado-masochism.
Melbourne ran around in circles a lot, picking out St.Kilda
defense players in the Melbourne forward line to kick to with monotonous regularity.
St.Kilda on the other hand, made three or four elegantly flowing forays forward
to win by six goals which really seemed more like four points given their
inability to “finish off’ in their own forward line.
Die-hard Melbourne supporters around us seemed pleased that
their team had not “given up” and St.Kilda fans were philosophic: “Oh, well
…it’s a win”. Which actually makes me wonder a little about the
sado-masochistic bit!
Last century, when a child, going to the footy was a weekly
family event always appearing as if we were about to embark on an extensive
expedition with blankets for all, coats, beanies, scarves, gloves and baskets
of food, fruit, cake and thermos’ of soup, coffee and tea all allocated for
sustenance during the quarter, half and ¾ time breaks.
We always sat in the “stand” in generally the same place at
“home” matches (there was no seat allocation) so there would be a coterie of
acquaintances to cheer or commiserate with, mostly in my memory, to commiserate
about the teams’ fortunes; and you always brought a footy so you could dash
down to the oval and have a “kick-to-kick” with six to ten of never-met-before-but-like-minded boys of the two or three hundred
littering the oval, who registered assent to your upraised footy at ½ time and
after the match.
The footy, by-the-way was never, ever, stolen.
You sat in your seat, conversed with your neighbours, looked
at the match and depending on how early you attended, saw the frost-bitten
“thirds’ then “seconds” games preceding the main event at 1:30pm, ate,
screamed, moaned, laughed and cried, stood up to stretch your legs and only
went “walkies” to go the lavatory or the kick-to-kick and went home at dusky,
misty 5:00pm for dinner or tea.
Oi! How things have changed!
For a start, there’s a $7,000 fine for going onto the oval.
This game started at 4:30pm and although a Saturday match it
could have been Friday or Sunday, sometimes Monday and occasionally Thursday
and at 7:50pm, 1:45pm, 2:10pm, or 1:10pm.
Misty winter dusk and night didn’t appear because the
artificial lighting was so seamless as to make you think it was still the
daylight of 2:00pm in autumn.
There was noise.
Not all of it that particular footy-crowd noise but a
multiplicity of noises from television sets touting some sort of competition,
another showing past matches and the “Big-Screen Scoreboard” flashing ads and
the advertising on the fence rotating through its promiscuous promotions
repertoire…. and there’s something happening on the ground but it’s not the
match and there are people moving, not to seats, but back and forward with
drinks (mostly alcoholic) and chips and ‘burgers and things and then the game
starts.
And the people keep moving back and forward with their
drinks and things and stop momentarily in the walkway to observe the play but
obstruct your vision of it and the big screen lights up with a replay and as
many football staff as players run onto the ground like spokes to the hub with
drinks for the players who mostly refuse their ministrations. At ½ time the
ground is a spectacle of 150 (?) little boys playing twenty homogenised and
pasteurised little games of football in cheek-by-jowl miniature fields whilst
the advertising rotates and the televisions spruik and the people are still
moving with back and forward with drinks (mostly alcoholic) and chips and
‘burgers and things and the game resumes.
Then it is over and the “The Saints Had Gone Marching In”
and we leave in the dark, somewhat shell-shocked by the sensory overload and at
the synthetic distractions deliberately offered and decide that the next match
might just be sitting in the car parked at the fence watching the Buninyong
“Snails” slide around the mud against the Daylesford “Dodos” on the Anzac Oval
at 2:30pm with a thermos of soup and “bipping” the car-horn for every goal.
We later had dinner at a local pub and observed an extended
family, possibly celebrating a grandparents’ anniversary, whose 4 children
spent the night after the meal, disengaged, playing on their individual phones.
And some more rehearsal shots
Ballet Theatre Australia where engagement is the order of the day.
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| Everyone's a photographer....! |
Wombat Droppings
Leigh Sales (ABC 7:30 report interview w/ Craig Emerson)
seems to think that uncouth interruption of an interviewee is forceful
investigative journalism.
Nah. Leigh, it’s
just bad manners!
If your only continuing technique in interviewing is
interruption, cutting off, ignoring the answer and being “Hissy-Fit” bullying
because you’re not having them play your game I reckon you should pack it in or
go and join Alan (Bondi) Jones at 2GB or become a “researcher” for the IPA!
If Sales is the best journo ABC has to offer at 7:30 then
it’s in a very serious talent drought.
Sales then had the temerity, no, stupidity to ask Emerson
why Labor couldn’t get its message out?
But then, it has been a week like that… “the Age” calling on
Prime Minister Gillard to resign because we need a serious debate about
policy…. ???
I don’t know what’s stopping them except themselves!
Paul Kelly from Murdoch’s OZ pretending that they had
nothing to do with trivial bullshit they report and that they would love to do
some serious journalism on policy
Perhaps they could try phone-hacking the pollies mobiles for
leads?
At least that’s a practice for which the Murdoch press is
renowned.
Then there were these utter gems from Nicolle
(where’s–my–brain) Flint, “If Rudd and Prime Minister Julia Gillard wish to
continue to fight this election playing the man not the ball, by tackling the
person not the policy, then let's assess Abbott on this basis. Let's ask
ourselves what sort of person we want to govern our nation”?
and the doughty
Amanda (deport-em-all) Vanstone, “Mums and dads have seen this government pour
public money into programs and then grossly mismanage them. Think pink batts
and covered learning areas at schools - a program that went under the risible
title of an ''education revolution''.
In Flint’s case black becomes
white and “Rabbott’s" history of legislative and written misogyny are to be
praised as virtues and recent policy is so thin on the ground there is nought to talk about.....
In Vanstone’s case she is as
accurate in her information here as she was in her migration assessment of a
Mr. Madafferi some years ago “…. it is alleged that relatives and associates of Madafferi
donated up to $100,000 to the Liberal Party, and that four Liberal party
politicians had discussed the visa case with Madafferi's supporters or
Vanstone's office. In August 2008, Madafferi was arrested and charged, along
with several of Australia's other suspected crime bosses (including Australian
'Ndrangheta boss Pasquale "Pat" Barbero) after Australian Federal
Police made the world's biggest ecstasy haul, seizing drugs with a street value
of $440 million.
During 2005 Vanstone became involved in some major
controversies, one of them involving a defecting Chinese diplomat, Chen
Yonglin, whilst others involved the deportation of Australian citizens and
permanent residents who her department considered undesirable – the Cornelia
Rau, Vivian Alvarez Solon, Stefan Nystrom and Robert Jovicic cases. An inquiry
by the former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer was severely
critical of the Immigration Department's treatment of Cornelia Rau… poor
Amanda… can’t take a trick and p.s…. is in my humble opinion an interviewer
only slightly less talented than Leigh Sales.
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| Rabbott |
And last but not least, from the prime suspect…."But as
I said our focus is not on parliamentary games, our focus isn't on Canberra
insider gossip. Our focus is on providing a strong alternative
government."
Did “Rabbott” run that one past Peter Slipper or Craig
Thompson or by running out of "the House" or the bullying tactics employed or only having "motherhood statements" not policy?
It’s five minutes to mid-night.
Cheers Petals,
Shane
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