Mother's Day

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Isabel.
Isabel who?
Isabel needed on my bike.
Oh that's an old one. That's as old as me.
But it made you laugh!
Who said I was laughing at you?
I just know.
Maybe I was. A bit.
And you'd light up another cigarette and take another sip of your beer and return to your favorite pastime of gazing out over the Devlin Street traffic and the vista of the valley clean all the way to West Ryde,
And you would be gone.
I could have sat there watching you all day. Sitting on the carpet pushing toy cars or hand painting an Airfix kit or playing with my prized Big Jim doll or reading books about telling the time and How The Snowies Were Made and learning about jobs long vanished such as steeplejacks and icemen.
You gave me that wonder, Ma. You gave me the gift of everything's going to work out and work out well somehow. You gave the gift of talking out of turn in a too-loud voice ensuring everyone remembers the occasion for lifetimes to come.
You gave us life and you gave us love.
You gave this much and much more besides and in return all I've given are the occasional pale remembrances and this stupid smile that appeared the day you brought me into the world.

Jean Isabel Connell nee McKee 1919-1998.

I wish I was a fisherman...

To you beautiful crazies in France.

"Remember your humanity, and forget the rest." - Albert Einstein. 9th July 1955.

I'm not that smart to pretend to know anything of nuance or subtlety. On the whole, I despise proselytisers - be they religious, political, entrepreneurial or cultural. And if we look at the net sum of my existence, I'm just a cheap blow-hard dabbler who, for the most part, knows very little about most things.
Which is why I have to chuckle at myself when I send out this imprecation to all of you readers in France. And that plea is this:
Please vote.
That's all.
Just vote.
I understand many, if not most of you are jaded by your politicians and, in fact, all politics and politicians the world over.  But as I've seen here in my own country (Australia), at times like this I have to remind myself that I AM the government. There's a part of me, of all of us, that is the best in each of those politicians - irrespective of their platforms and policies. After all, no monster is pure evil. And at the end of the day, I don't care if you hate Macron and love Le Pen, just get your arse out and vote.
Actually that's bullshit, I do care.  I can't stand this horseshit portmanteau/euphemism of alt-right. It's Fascism by any other name and although I have friends of every political persuasion just to ensure I'm still in with the non-bias confirmation brigades who wait silently in the wings to lynch me the moment I take one false step, I cannot for the life of me see how rationalising and exalting hate and ignorance, fear and greed can ever bring about any real and worthwhile change. If you want a world overrun with fuckwits like Trump and Putin, by all means, go for it.  If you want to revert to the romantic and insane delusion that you are a powerful empire a la Brexit, then yes, by all means run with the Le Pen oligarchy/autocracy. If you're so desperate for some kind of absolutism (which, let's be clear, is never anything democracy can bring to the table - democracy has no centre as can be understood on the whole. It never holds.  It just keeps burbling and bumbling forwards.  But fuck it, unlike the others, at least it IS moving forwards, blind and silly though it can be), then again run with who you feel will bring about such Pyrrhic triumphs.
But you will know what is right in your heart, whether I concur with you or not.  Otherwise you wouldn't go on reading the nonsense I write.
See?  Now I hate myself. My tawdry proselytising.
But irrespective of my small hopes, please get out and get to the ballot. You - all of you - are the guardians of one of the most inspirational countries in the world, in history.
My humble desire is that you hold your arms wide and embrace this rich guardianship so that France can remain in that worthwhile state of very ordinary and very human exaltation for boundless lifetimes to come.
Alright. I'll shut up in
3...
2...
1.

The power is measured by the pound or the fist...