Dear Dad,

Ten years ago today you fashioned yourself a noose and bid the world goodbye. A large part of me thought you a coward then and an even larger part of me thinks so now.

It all seemed a little implausible - you were 35 and had four sons, aged 16 (me), 14, 9 and 3. Sure, your wife divorced you a couple of years after you walked out and moved away, but do you blame her? You refused to support your kids financially yet benefited from their unblinkered love for you, which for me bordered on worship. I know now what a fuck-up you were, but still now, looking back, it seemed to me that at that point in time at least that you’d finally come to peace with your flaws, but then you left permanently.

I mean, yeah you were seeing a strange woman at the time, but we all need an ego boost at times right? I say she’s strange, yet when you died there was an air of blame toward her wafting around. What is she to blame for Dad? You reached that tipping point and gave in. You consigned four boys to a fatherless life. And you will never know my beautiful wife or the child we’re expecting in September. You are to blame, Dad. You listened to the voice, gave in to temptation and You Hanged Yourself In Your Garage.

So anyway, what’s been happening with you, what have you been up to? Me? Wow, where do I begin…

You died in 1998, I was in Year 11. I went on to finish Year 11 and then Year 12. During this time I was with my first proper girlfriend. Never could ask you how that should all unfold, could I? I made do though. After Year 12 I spent a year in a video store haze before moving to Canberra for uni. That first year of uni was full-on! I fell in love, had my heart broken, made some great friends, learned what good writing was, got drunk a lot, got stoned a bit, lost a lot of weight and lived the stereotypical uni life, basically. Then I went home for summer and recuperated.

Second year in Canberra, 2002, I fell in love again and would spend the next two or so years in love with that girl. That was a pretty good year 2002, the first nine months of it anyway. The next year and a half I kind of stumbled through in a bit of a daze, lost interest in most things. The relationship was on-off and eventually died the death it needed to when I got blind drunk and came a cropper off a bridge, landing on a road 7m below and breaking my pelvis and left wrist. I’d been visiting Canberra that weekend, having moved back home to spend a year working and taking some time out to weigh up what I wanted to do. After that incident, I spent 3 months in bed and it was then that I think I finally laid to rest the demons that had hovered since you died. Six and a half years, and I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. Thanks, Dad.

Strangely, just as I was banishing you to my past and learning to think of my future and what I wanted to do with myself, some money of yours turned up. It wasn’t much, but it meant I could pay my mother back some money and also get a tattoo. I got a Celtic Circle Cross, just like you liked. I wanted to mark your memory in some way so that I could let you go properly.

The great amusement of this is that the very day I ended up getting that tattoo, is the day I met the woman who would become my wife. It was only that I happened to be on my way to the tattoo guy that I stopped by and visited a lady I worked with, and who had her niece visiting from Melbourne. That niece is now my gorgeous wife and is carrying your first grandchild. I guess in some way I should thank you, as when i finally started to let you go, I found my new life. And now, I wouldn’t change a thing.

There are some times that I really miss you Dad, and some that I don’t. I wish you were at my wedding and I wish you were helping me to get ready for fatherhood. I pit this, though, against the fact that you weren’t the greatest father, truth be told, and I come to believe that some of the greatest lessons that you taught me were those that I shouldn’t follow. I won’t be divorcing my wife as I will always work on my marriage if it ever needs it. I won’t be leaving my kids as I know how they’ll be if their father pisses off. Mostly, I won’t be a stubborn prick who bottles their bullshit up and lets it corrode my soul. You showed me what that can do.

Don’t get me wrong Dad, I don’t hate you. I have loads of great memories of you and in particular I will never forget the conversation we had when I was 15 and you were visiting. Those words have stayed with me and I do try to live up to them.

So now it’s a decade since you were last here, since that final voicemail on my NEC Fido mobile phone that you said was an expensive waste of money! It’s been an interesting decade, though I can see it’s made me into who I am. For kicking off 10 years of discovery and the building of me, I do thank you.

If there is something beyond the earthly world (I keep changing my mind about whether there is or not), perhaps we’ll cross paths then. You’ll be able to pick me out - I’ll be the one who looks a bit like you but who in a delicious conundrum, is ten times the man you were, partly thanks to you.

Your eldest,

Joel.

Danny Katz has it spot on - no one is happy being what they are anymore. Please read:

What happened to calling a couch a couch?
Danny Katz
March 13, 2008

Driving down Dandenong Road, and I get stuck at the lights beside a builder’s ute — I know it’s a builder’s ute because it’s got a builder’s ladder strapped to the roof, and a builder’s wheelbarrow tossed in the back, and a big boofhead builder sitting in the driver’s seat. But no, I’m wrong, this is no builder at all, because there’s a logo on the side of the ute that says “Building Practitioner”. Oh sorry, this guy is clearly a highly qualified DOCTOR OF BUILDING, a surgeon-in-residence of residences, with a PhD in the Biochemical Cardiology of Bathroom Renos (Honours, No Job Too Big Or Too Small).

What a wanker, I think to myself, and I lean out the window and give him a you-big-wanker stare, but after the lights have changed, and he’s two blocks away, and I’ve done a U-turn and am facing the opposite way.

Driving some more, I pull up at a furniture shop; I’ve come here to buy a new couch because my old couch is all frayed and limp and upholstered in a finely woven blend of take-away Pad Thai noodles and liquefied thigh fat. But I’m wrong about this place, this isn’t a furniture shop at all, because the sign out the front says “Homeware Gallery” — oh sorrrrrrrr-eeee this is clearly an Art Gallery Of Furnishings, a place where you’d buy a Jackson Pollock-spattered bookcase or an ottoman from the Ottoman Empire.

I go inside and a furniture salesman comes up to me, all Saba-suited and slick-haired — but I’m wrong again, he’s not a salesman, because the label on his lapel says “Domestic Interiors Consultant”. He says, “Can I help you sirrrrrrr?” and I say, “Why yes you cannnnnn, I’d like to look at your range of couches please” and he says, “Oh you mean our COLLECTION of urban MODULAR units”, because couches now comes in “collections”, and they’re all “modular”, so that every bit of couch can be swapped with every other bit of couch, like some kind of saucy, sordid sofa swinger’s club.

This is all too wankish for me, so I go next door to another furniture shop, but I don’t bother going inside because this one’s called The Sofa Workshop and I don’t particularly want to see sofa-beds workshopping scenes from Greek tragedies, or a Jason Recliner doing a Theatresports exercise and pretending to be a big French pouffe.

Driving back home, I pass suburban restaurants that have mysteriously re-spelled themselves into “Ristorantes”, and fruit shops that have magically turned into “Fruitisseries” and I start thinking about how nobody’s content to be what they are any more — we live in a euphemistic world where everyone and everything wants to sound bigger, better, more bitchin’ than they actually are.

Now, stay-at home parents are called Domiciliary Progeny Engineers. Council garbagemen are Civic Toxicological Hygienists. Stenchy old boozers sleeping on bus benches are Olfactory-Impaired Al Fresco Dysfunctionistas. A dog turd in a public park is a Municipal Colonic Canine Installation.

Everything’s talking itself up: you can’t just buy chocolate ice-cream from an ice-cream parlour (a Techno-Frappa Gelatorium) — now it’s called Wickkkked Heavenly Cocoa n’ Creme Therapy, but it tastes the same as the 40-litre tub of brown ice-confection from Aldi. You can’t just buy a normal pizza from a pizzeria (a Wood-Fired Peasant Mountain-Bread Trattoria): now it’s all tandoori abalone pizza or minted prunes pizza. Dominos is now doing a pizza called Seven Meats — I didn’t even know there WERE seven meats.

How I miss the old days when a couch was a couch and a pizza was a pizza and a builder didn’t practise laparoscopic pancreatic wallboard surgery.

Those simple honest days before we turned into a society of jumped-up, grandiloquent, self-important pomps living in a state of chronic WANKORIFFIA.

I AM GONNA BE A DADDY!

My wife is 10 weeks pregnant and due mid-September, so excited. Have started a ’side project’ to chronicle it all: http://beingadaddy.net

Wow, I’m the happiest bloke around…

We’ve had a bit of a cooler week in Melbourne, with the nights in particular having a little chill about them. I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been nice coming home from work, getting into my pyjamas and snuggling up on the couch, watching TV and cuddling the wifey.

It’s a little strange though, as last winter seemed to go forever and summer was a very welcome change. Now that we’ve done that though, I am warming (hehe) to the idea of a cooler period and snuggling up and being toasty warm. What I don’t like, and am dreading however, are the bitterly fierce and bastard winds that slice through you. Cold is ok, but being flayed by icy rain and wind isn’t appealing.

In a few months time it’ll be all about bed socks, soup and toast, and hot chocolate. Plus reading in bubble baths and having nice, warm dinners. Also in a few months time I may very well be complaining about the cold and calling for summer to hurry up.

Seems to be the way these things go.

With the exception of a four/five-month break, I have been a smoker for around 10 years. That all ended nearly two weeks ago. I am now a non-smoker.

The origins of this habit began earlier. I had my first full cigarette the day of my 11th birthday and bought my first packet, myself, aged 12. I smoked now and then, on and off, until I was 15 and decided I didn’t want to be a smoker ‘when I grew up’. When I was 16, I started again and as mentioned earlier have been ever since, excepting a short intermission where I toyed with quitting, but if the truth be told, never viewed it as more than temporary anyway.

The past six months or so I was getting closer and closer to calling it quits on the nicotine front. I wasn’t enjoying it quite as much as I did and plans for the future were evolving - plans which required me to be a non-smoker. So I decided on a day and went and spoke to a chemist. After some chatting and divulging of my smoking habits and rituals, using patches was decided as the best way for me to go. I’m doing the 3 month program, where you use 21mg patches for 6 weeks, then 14mg ones for 3 weeks before dropping down to 7mg patches for 3 weeks. The chemist told me that some people are on them much longer than that and if I felt that I needed longer to keep using them. It’s obviously early days (Week 2 almost at an end) but I am comfortable using patches for as long as I need.

The day before Q-Day, I smoked a lot. Every 30 minutes I’d duck outside for a couple and really suck them back. I savoured every breath and tried to imagine how the next day would play out. I think that smoking that much actually helped me quit, as I felt a little ill by the time I puffed my last and climbed into bed. Waking the next day was tough, as I usually showered, dressed and smoked before heading off to work. There were many times throughout that day and the ones that followed where I was at a loss for periods of five minutes - these gaps were previously smoking time but they were now empty.

I came to realise that for me, smoking was a form of punctuation - a way of marking the passage of time: I ate then smoked, I worked a little the smoked, I arrived/left work and smoked, I got home and smoked, and so on. Without the smoking I was a little lost and found myself panicking about how I didn’t know what to do with myself at those previously-critical junctures. So I started having a glass of water, followed by some fruit, each time that I would normally have a cigarette. That helped and I have been eating a lot of fruit and drinking a lot more water than I used to. The first Saturday was tough and I ate a whole rockmelon on one sitting, wondering whether I’d really be able to shake the habit.

Each day has been a little easier, and knowing that my body isn’t psychotically screaming out for a smoke due to the patches, I have found myself getting better and not thinking about them. The other day though I forgot to put a patch on at home and went the day without one.

I was ok whilst at work but when I got home that night I was really struggling. I didn’t want to use a patch only for a few hours so I rode it out, but the wife found me particularly hard to be around and went to her folks for a few hours. Next morning I remembered and it was a lot easier.

So I’m two weeks in and quite proud of myself. It is easier this time also because I am definite in my desire not to be a smoker any more. I don’t want a sore throat any more and I don’t want the wife to roll away from me when I get into bed, put off by my odour. I keep telling myself that “I am a non-smoker” and it’s sinking in. Each day is better than the last (ever so slightly) and I am confident that by following the patch program I can really shake this addiction once and for all.

The kids I will one day have will be glad I live to see them become adults. And I will have beaten an addiction. Both pretty damn good motivators.

At 6am today, my grandmother breathed her last and mooched on to whatever is next.

While I didn’t spend as much time with my grandmother as I would have liked, I am sad. She was an amazing woman and she died too young, just 69.

Grandma had a challenging life. She and my grandfather worked hard to raise five children. Grandma was a teacher and spent nights sewing clothes for her children, keeping house, and studying towards more qualifications. She studied all her working life, eventually achieving her Masters in her fifties. She had a strong interest in Aboriginal culture and welfare; I still remember the day she introduced me to Geoff Clark and took me out to the Aboriginal settlement at Framlingham.

Summers, when we kids would visit, she stayed up nights with me, watching the tennis and eating jelly and ice cream. She always had a book I ‘had to read’ and when I was around 12, she unlocked the cabinet with her ‘best books’ and opened up the journals of her parents and grandparents to me. She had a very strong sense of family history and always told stories about her ancestors. When I saw her about eighteen months ago, she gave me a copy of of the travel diary of one of our ancestors who sailed a true sea voyage. Grandma had edited and published it, wanting the adventure to live on.

She retired and looked forward to reading, writing and the pursuit of personal enrichment. Sadly, shortly after retiring, her body slowly began to give way. While it took many years to eventually wear her down, her quality of life was limited and she never enjoyed the retirement we all wished she might have.

My wedding in April this year was a big undertaking for her but she made it. She came to the ceremony and the reception, beamed the whole time and even giggled as I struggled to pin a corsage on her dress.

Today I pause and give thanks that I had a grandmother who showed me that to learn is to grow, and that family is everything.

So John Howard is gone and we have a Labor Government. Much joy and excitement. I am looking forward to being a completely proud and true Aussie again, a member of a country that is decent and cares about more than the stockmarket and the latest SUV.

Of all the reflections on the now-former PM, this one is the best.

I welcome Gary Linnell back to the print world.

In this oberserver’s opinion, the Australian political scene lacks a certain air of gravitas and grace from its participants. Too often opportunities to charm and woo the audience are let go and the viewers are dished up more of the bland same.

Compare this with The West Wing, the series that examines life inside the White House and executive administration, created by Aaron Sorkin. In this environment, both the president and his spokespersons alike all have a certain intangible charm, especially White House Press Secretary CJ Cregg who charms a media pack like an old hand.

So - what would happen if Aaron Sorkin was writing a series about the Australian political landscape? I imagine it might go something like this…

Doorstop interview with Kevin Rudd, Leader of the Opposition.

Reporter:
Mr Rudd, the environment’s been a big topic this week and the government say you’ve flip-flopped on Kyoto, how do you respond to that?

Rudd:
They’re climate change sceptics but they’re going after the green vote - as Malcolm Turnbull now knows, you can’t have your yellowcake and eat it too.

Reporter:
Your environment spokesman Peter Garrett’s been quoted as saying that you’ll change all your policies after the election, a bit embarrassing?

Rudd:
Steve Price has form in deceiving the public. In 2004 he went on national television and claimed to have a copy of the Latham Bucks Night on tape – a video that never existed. And we know Peter Garrett has a sense of humour and was joking, he still maintains that he’s a good dancer.

Reporter:
Tony Abbott’s had a shocker in the past week or so, do you see that as arrogance from the government?

Rudd:
Tony Abbott wasn’t being arrogant, that requires careful planning. His brain just lost a few hands of Catholic Roulette.

Reporter:
The polls show voters are increasingly viewing the Prime Minister as out of touch, do you agree with that view?

Rudd:
Mr Howard’s not out of touch – he just can’t see the future for the eyebrows.

Reporter:
The Prime Minister and Treasurer are campaigning as a team in this election more so than in the past, what do you make of that?

Rudd:
It’s a funny old team that’s for sure, with John Howard the Man of Steel, and Peter Costello the Tin Man lamenting “If I only had a spine”.

Reporter:
Your TV advertisements warn of changes to WorkChoices yet the government are adamant there won’t be any more after the election, what do you say to that?

Rudd:
I see Joe Hockey’s offered to quit if there are any changes to WorkChoices, but Kevin Andrews beat him to that a year ago when the Fairness Test was introduced following a series of bad polls for the government. And just on changes to industrial relations, I hear Mr Howard’s scrapping Labour Day and replacing it with “Liberal Day”. It’ll be the best unpaid 24 hours overtime of our lives. Thankyou.

Kevin Rudd deftly bats away the ‘McLelland Speech Incident’.

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