..with an annoyingly cheerful ‘Good morning’. Some time is spent contemplating what I would do with all the money I am totally convinced that I am going to win in the next lottery draw, a conviction which has gone totally unrewarded. Annoyingly I know that I have a better chance of being struck by a car going to buy the ticket that I have of winning first prize. Or, in my case, any prize.
The only lottery I ever won got me into the army!
In the summer you wonder if you actually did swallow that fly, because going uphill means that you are breathing very deeply, sweating, have your mouth open and are going quite slowly. I have only once really inhaled a fly and it was totally disgusting and radically different from the several hundred times that I have thought that I have swallowed a fly. Perhaps I’ll die?
So I then explained that one of the things that I thought about was what I should write in this monthly piece of personal persiflage. Determining what to write is actually harder than bringing forth the thousand words or so I commit to paper each month.
At the beginning of the year I wrote a list of worthy topics that I thought that might interest me - and you - enough to keep on writing and reading respectively. But I look at it now and it seems so damned worthy, respectable and, perhaps, a little sanctimoniously boring. Pretentious even. ‘Moi, pretentious?’
Anyway, before Christmas I can’t bring myself, or Poirot’s little grey cells, to contemplate such topics as……….
What price health? Answer: what’s wrong with you and how much money do you have? Nobody dies accidentally in intensive care. And, get over it – you have to die someday – just as longs as it isn’t tomorrow. Apparently the only way to ensure physical and mental health is through exercise, which is a bummer.
Education versus vocationalism. I started on that but, despite its relevance, I ended up staring into space thinking with mild despair about the fifteen years I spent teaching in the Norther suburbs of Melbourne). The answer is that they are different and shouldn’t be trusted to private enterprise (at least in Australia).
Tribalism - is language the problem? Answer: it’s one of the problems, but stupidity, greed and power-mongering add their bit, as does religion. The powers that control soccer ought to be the experts on that - but aren’t. When will Seth Blatter resign by the way? Will they have to drag him screaming from the building?
Predicting the future. Answer: it’s easy after the fact.
Are we our parents? More than we like to admit and usually it’s not a bad thing. There are exceptions to this such as unnatural family intimacy in Tasmania and the West Coast of New Zealand.
………. and so on and so down to the eternally interesting ‘Thomas Pynchon’s books – are they literature or just post-modern rubbish. Answer is that there are some that are masterpieces, but some leave me asking the question ’Why did he do that?’ He is definitely an acquired taste and not an easy read. As they say “Don’t go there.”
For those who worry about my mortal soul I have discovered the books of Terry Pratchett, which was quite easy as he wrote several library shelves full. Anybody who can write the following paragraph gets my vote.
“According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in the greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order because it is better organised.” Now this is not quite to Douglas Adams standard, but it passes the time more than agreeably.
So, rather than pontificate about the world, I thought I would tell you what I learnt this year.
Well, yesterday I learnt that the snakes in Victoria have narrower heads than the snakes further north and that if you are bitten the gaps between two fang entry points may be quite small – less than 7mm. Don’t sit around Googling the answer; go straight to hospital. The other thing is that 25% of the population may go into immediate anaphylactic shock and slower allergic reactions are common, so anti-venom won’t be administered unless there is a crash trolley nearby.
For those worried that this is a personal experience, it isn’t, but happened to a lady I met yesterday. New Zealand does not have snakes by the way and it won the World Cup Rugby.
I learnt that doing cryptic crossword puzzles doesn’t make you smarter or keep your mental faculties swimming along at two hundred per cent as you creep towards the event horizon. It only makes you good at cryptic cross words.
I learnt that the extremes of the political left and right are both nuts, but that the far right is by far the craziest of the two.
I learnt that the more you cycle the better you get at it, ,but that, counter-intuitively, a wider tyre is faster than a narrow tyre. Illogically there is more uphill than downhill and that the prevailing wind is always a head wind.
I learnt that your senses do deteriorate with age even though you aren’t always aware of it. What I’d give to be able to see and hear as well as when I was in my twenties.
I confirmed that there is usually a correlation between the price of wine and how good it is. Wines may not always improve with age but some are definitely more interesting. The surprise aged bottle of the year was a Delatite Sauvignon Blanc. Who would have though it could last 20 years? And, yes, I had lost the bottle under the house.
I learnt that our daughter was going to get married early next year to a man who is taller, darker, better looking and probably smarter than I. Whilst I am absolutely delighted and happy this is known as the father’s moment of truth. Like the year I’m sure I’ll get over it.