Sweet respite.

Three glorious days down at Phillip Island.
We didn't go anywhere other than the local grocer to pick up things for dinner.
We didn't need any damned penguins or racetracks or vintage planes or wild and windswept cliff faces.
We needed spa time.
Spa time and the voices and faces and boisterous laughter of friends.
And we had plenty of both
but still never enough.
Always never enough.

Nowhere, man.

i owe you this.

because tonight I've eaten pizza
and the tank in the car is full.
There's money in the bank (it's from a bank loan and I'll have to pay a stupid amount of interest on it to get it all paid back but tonight that's okay) and that money will allow Cam and Taelin and I to eat and sleep well and warm against the cold.
I owe you this because you were good to me
when I had so little, I didn't even know who I was anymore.
I didn't know how little I was worth and how much life really costs.
But I owe you this because I'll get up in the morning and I'll go to my job and I'll fret and worry about some decisions I made, or should have made.  Or something I communicated badly.  Or too well.
But I owe you this because you're reading this and you've been good to me in the brief time that we've been friends
and I haven't given you much but what little I've given comes from my small and crowded heart.
And I owe you this for every streak of luck you've shared.
For every time you took a moment out from your good fortune and remembered someone somewhere who you felt to be worthy.
And for them, you kept something aside.
And I owe you this because you won't be here forever and I certainly won't be here forever,
and for this tempestuous little while
we only have each other.
I hope you like it.

Perils.

That decidedly ordinary and entirely suburban pleasure of stopping for the lollipop person as they usher the last of the weekday schoolchildren across the road. Warm and rich and right.
And that decidedly exquisite feeling as you blast the horn twenty meters later at the oncoming Lamborghini Aventador that pulls a u turn directly in front of you without as much as an indicator signal.
BEEEEP!
"What are you doing, you fucking prick?! Dumbarsed jizzrag dickwad!"
I figured afterwards they could have been mobsters or they may have even been so damned wealthy they could have buried me through the court system for the remainder of my natural life.
On the other hand, fuck 'em. I'd already done my one good deed for the day.

Drivin'

Before I forget.

Then there was that one Friday night when we dropped acid and you wanted chocolate milk at three in the morning, so we walked from Top Ryde to Mascot airport and watched the planes land. I don't think we ever did get the chocolate milk. Happy birthday, whoever you are.
Wherever I am.

Can you please crawl out out your window?

Here we are again.

Most moments pass like hurtling trains,
Between the day jobs and the distractions we use to fill the gaps, and the occasional fortunes - good, bad or otherwise.
As we all pick up the pieces of our lives.
But this day, everything seems slower.
The breeze hurts on the skin
Something simple, like absentmindedly scratching an itch on my forehead causes a small, noticeable suffering.
A leaden step
that makes everywhere I have to be seem a million miles away and hardly worth taking the effort for.
Even the morning cup of tea isn't the same
And my guess is that today I just won't feel myself.
I could ask the same questions I've been asking these past three years but I'm not going to.
I'm old now and the working day won't let me writhe and wrack in the mire as I've been known to do
but in this painfully strung out moment, as with all other moments, never think I've forgotten your crazy brain,
Our crazy schemes,
Those crazy days.
I will remember your insanity forever and beyond, Jake.

Camera

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...